


Live For Ten

by brihana25



Category: NCIS
Genre: Angst, Drama, Episode Related, Episode: s06e05 Nine Lives, Family, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Season/Series 06, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-03
Updated: 2014-07-14
Packaged: 2017-11-13 11:56:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 72,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/503304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brihana25/pseuds/brihana25
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Torture, mutilation, murder ... they thought Azari's death was the end of it. But Gibbs and Tony caught the wrong man's attention, and for them, the nightmare is just beginning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by the incomparable, amazing, and astoundingly talented LdyAnne.

* * *

"Don't you have anything better to do?"

He ignored both the voice and the question it asked, just as he'd done a dozen times before. It earned him another sigh in response.

"Seriously, Tony. She'll be back next week. Are you planning to sit there and stare at her desk the whole time she's gone?"

"I'm thinking, Probie."

"No, you're obsessing. There's a difference."

Tony DiNozzo steepled his fingers and pressed them against his lips. "Where'd she go?" he asked quietly.

Tim McGee sighed once more and stood, glancing around the squad room as he crossed to Tony's desk. "You know where she went," he said. "She's on vacation in Tel Aviv."

"But why?" He asked the question without looking up. "Of all the places in the world she could go on vacation, why there? Who's she meeting?" His thoughts drifted back to the dark-haired man in the picture he'd found on her desk before she left. "Who is he?"

"Who is who?" Tim settled himself on the corner of Tony's desk and looked down at him. "She went to see her father."

"We don't know that for sure." He leaned back in his chair and glanced at Tim before looking back at Ziva David's empty desk. "Sure, Eli lives in Tel Aviv, but she never said she was going to see him."

"Why else would she go?" Tim shook his head and rubbed his eyes. "And why do you care so much?"

He didn't answer at first, just sat with his fingers on his lips, staring straight ahead. "You believe in gut feelings, McCynic?"

"With Gibbs for a boss? Are you serious? Of course I do."

"You ever get one you can't explain?"

Tim shrugged and nodded. "Yeah, sometimes. Why?"

"Because I'm having one right now," Tony said. He looked up at Tim; the expression on his face was uncharacteristically serious. "And I don't like it."

"What do you mean?" He could hear the confusion in Tim's voice, and he couldn't blame him for it. He didn't really understand it himself. "What kind of feeling?"

He shook his head. "I don't know what it is. I just can't shake it."

"You're overreacting, Tony."

"Something's going on," he said softly. "Ziva's hiding something from us, and take it from me, that never ends well." He shook his head at the memory of his own experience with keeping secrets from his team and how much he'd lost because of it. "Something bad's gonna happen."

Tim huffed in frustration and pushed himself to his feet. "You've been spending too much time with Abby."

"Abby's usually right about the bad stuff."

Tim walked back to his desk and sat down. "Ziva's not hiding anything. She's just trying to have a private life. She's allowed to do that, ya know."

"But what if she's …?"

"Will you just stop?" Tim said. "You've got a report to write. And if you don't get it done soon, Gibbs is gonna be pissed." He turned back to his keyboard, and it was obvious that as far as he was concerned, the conversation was over.

"Maybe you're right, McGee." He conceded the point with a shrug; anything was possible. "But I'm still worried about her."

"You're just bored," Tim said quickly. "You're jumping at ghosts."

Tim's voice had no trace of its usual irritated edge. Its absence was enough to make Tony glance across at him. Tim was looking back with an expression of understanding and concern.

Tony blinked and thought over what he'd said in the past few minutes, and his eyes widened slightly. He'd been talking openly, candidly and carelessly. He'd almost gone too far, come too close to admitting too many things that he'd never have said out loud if he'd been paying more attention. But Tim was offering him an out – a "get out of uncomfortable subject free" card – and he was going to take it.

He straightened in his chair and reached for his own keyboard. "Yeah, you're right." He forced himself to lighten the tone of his voice, to inject some levity back into the tension between them. "I've been stuck with you all day. Who wouldn't be bored?"

"Hey!" Tim objected. "You started this conversation. I just wanted you to write your report."

"I am."

"You are what, DiNozzo?" a gruff voice behind him asked.

"Writing my report, Boss!"

Tony and Tim exchanged a quick questioning glance. Neither of them knew how long he'd been behind them, or how much he'd heard, so they were going to pretend that they hadn't said anything worth overhearing in the first place.

Leroy Jethro Gibbs rounded the partition to the left of Tony's desk and looked down at the monitor. "Your computer type in invisible ink?"

Tony shook his head rapidly and started typing. "Just gathering my thoughts."

"Good idea," Tim said. "You can't really afford to lose track of the few you have."

Tony shot him a sidelong glare with no real heat behind it, Tim smiled, and Gibbs smirked at them both as he walked to his desk. Tony took a deep breath and forced himself to concentrate on the report he was supposed to be writing. He looked down at the handwritten notes in front of him, flipping through them as he skimmed them one more time.

The case hadn't been an easy one to solve, but that was par for the course around the Navy Yard. For four days, the Major Case Response Team had chased shadows in circles as they tried to figure out who'd tortured and killed Lance Corporal Rob Brewer and PFC Michael Strauss. Every time they turned around, they'd hit another wall. The first had been the fact that their initial suspect was the star witness in a federal murder case against a mobster named Rick Azari. That had brought FBI agent Tobias Fornell, and his incompetent sidekick Bruce Rivers, into the picture.

And that had just been the beginning.

The corners of Tony's mouth curled up in a half smile, and he shook his head when he saw Agent Rivers' name. 'Poor guy,' he thought. 'I know what it's like to lose a witness. I should take him out for a beer.'

The case had been a difficult one to solve, especially since they'd ended up having to work with the FBI on it, but the wrap-up couldn't have been simpler. Abby had managed to link Azari to the Marines' murders forensically, and Jack Kale – the FBI's witness – had killed him for it. The new murder case against Kale had been filed, the FBI had started cleaning up the messes they'd made, and for NCIS, it was all over except the paperwork.

Tony settled into transferring his notes to his computer, but he couldn't shake the feeling of dread and foreboding that had been hanging over him all day. He wanted to believe that Tim was right and he was imagining things, but it felt too real. He didn't even know for sure that it had anything to do with Ziva; he just knew it had started about the same time she'd left. 

He felt like someone was standing behind him, staring at his back. The sensation was so strong that it made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He shuddered involuntarily, but covered it by pretending to roll his shoulders instead. A quick glance across at his boss's desk told him that Gibbs had seen it, so Tony flashed him a quick smile before looking back down at his keyboard.

He started typing, but he'd only gotten a few words down before he felt the invisible eyes boring into him again. The skin on his back crawled, and the more he tried to ignore the feeling, the stronger it got. He turned his head quickly and looked back over his shoulder, but of course there was nothing behind him but his filing cabinets.

"Problem, DiNozzo?"

"No," Tony lied. He turned back around and gave Gibbs another quick, insincere smile. "Everything's fine."

Tim coughed, and Tony looked over at him. Tim's eyes were wide, his eyebrows low and his forehead crinkled in concern. He shot a glance of his own at Gibbs, and Tony knew he was being told to come clean. It was just like Tim had said earlier – Gibbs was an expert on gut feelings. No one would understand what was bothering him at that moment better than Gibbs would.

Tony shook his head almost imperceptibly, and Tim's expression changed to one of disbelief and frustration. It wasn't that he didn't want to let Gibbs in on what he was feeling, because he did. He just wanted a clearer idea of exactly what it was before he said anything about it.

"What the hell is going on with you two?"

Tony didn't know why he'd thought that his and Tim's silent conversation had gone unnoticed, because of course it hadn't.

"Nothing, Boss," they answered in unison.

"Then quit making moony eyes at each other and get to work," Gibbs snapped. As they returned their attention to their respective computers, he rolled his eyes and went back to his.

Tony's slow tapping on his keyboard was a sharp contrast to Tim's rapid typing, and a few moments passed with nothing but those sounds in the air. Suddenly, Tony's fingers stopped moving, and he picked up his pile of notes and started rifling through them. 

He scanned the pages quickly; he knew exactly what he was looking for, and he knew he wouldn't find it. He'd read the notes a dozen times in the past four days, and he was the one who'd written them in the first place. As he finished reading them over, the feeling of impending doom almost doubled, and he muttered to himself under his breath.

"It's not over."

"What's that, DiNozzo?"

"The case," he said. The feeling of dread that he'd felt before was screaming at him, demanding to be acknowledged, but he pushed past it. "It's not over."

"How's it not over?" Tim asked. "Our suspect's dead."

"I know he is," Tony said. "But being our prime suspect doesn't mean he was the killer, does it?"

Gibbs looked more than slightly surprised. "We had him on forensics. Weren't you paying attention?" he asked. "The rope that Brewer and Strauss were tied up with came from his basement."

"I know that, too. There's no doubt he ordered it." Tony locked eyes with Gibbs from across the squad room. "But when's the last time you heard of a boss who did his own dirty work?"

* * *

"Azari's organization isn't the same one he took over from Alonzo Torres twenty-five years ago." Tim looked back and forth between the notes in his hand and the picture of Rick Azari on the plasma screen in front of him. "One of the first things he did, in addition to murdering five of Torres' top officers, was increase the number of soldiers he had. They're not as big as the Gambinos or the Banannos, but they're not small, either."

Immediately after Tony's realization, Gibbs had started them on digging up as much intel as they could find on Rick Azari and his associates. They'd already collected a basic history of Azari's crime family during the Brewer and Strauss investigation, but they needed more than that to go on. While Tim and Tony were working, Gibbs had gone up to Director Vance's office to inform him that they were keeping the case open. It hadn't taken him long, just a few minutes, to get the go-ahead from Vance, and now they were standing next to Gibbs' desk reviewing the information they'd gathered.

"The organizational chart that we got from the FBI gives us the names of four officers and half a dozen capos, any one of whom could have been involved in murdering Brewer and Strauss. They also estimate about two dozen or so soldiers that function just as low-level muscle, but they have very few names."

"After twenty-five years?" Gibbs leaned forward in his chair and rested his arms on his desk. "That's all Tobias has?"

"That's all I could get to," Tim clarified. "Azari was killed with an FBI agent's weapon. Every piece of information they had on him has been locked down. At least one agent has been fired over what happened, and another three were disciplined."

"I know," Gibbs said. "Fornell almost got suspended. What does that have to do with this?"

"They're reviewing the conduct of their own agents; they've tightened security, all but eliminated access to their files on him, and buried everything as deep as they can."

"Then hack it."

"I did, Boss," Tim said with a nervous smile. "I still can't access it. And even if I could, it probably wouldn't be relevant anymore. Things have been changing rapidly within the organization over the past few days, and the FBI is scrambling to catch up. Most of what little information I have been able to find is outdated."

"Azari's death left a power vacuum," Tony said. "People are coming and going like crazy right now, and there's a lot of confusion. His two top lieutenants – both considered potential successors – were found dead late last week, shot in the head."

"Someone's taking over," Gibbs observed. "So who is it?"

"Don't know for sure, but we have a pretty good idea." Tony took the control for the plasma out of Tim's hand and brought up a blurry screencap from a ZNN report. "Stefano DelMar."

The face on the screen was one that Gibbs recognized immediately. "I met him," he said. "Azari's bodyguard."

"Bodyguard and personal secretary," Tony said. "And, at the moment, de facto boss and functional head of the organization."

"ZNN's been reporting on him all weekend," Tim added. "Metro, and some 'underworld sources' quoted by ZNN, believe that he ordered the killings of Azari's lieutenants, if he didn't kill them himself. But they don't have much more than that. It doesn't look like DelMar was even on their radar before now, not Metro or the FBI. No one seems to know anything about him."

"And what do we know about him?" Gibbs asked.

Tony cocked his head and gave a tight smile. "A hell of a lot more than they do."

He clicked the control again, and DelMar's driver's license came up on the screen. "Stefano DelMar, twenty-eight years old. He got his start in organized crime in Baltimore when he was sixteen, as an errand boy. The organization he worked for got busted up two years later, and within a year, he moved on to Azari. He'd always been a minor player, just a soldier." Tony paused to take a deep breath. "But he really liked his job, and he was brutal. Azari made him his bodyguard two years later, and his secretary two years after that. He's smart, knows how to avoid the spotlight. He was Azari's right-hand-man for five years, and the FBI barely has a file on him. He's only been arrested once, and that never made it to trial. He was a minor, so the record is sealed."

"So unseal it," Gibbs ordered.

Tony shook his head. "No need. The charge was First Degree assault."

"That's the equivalent of attempted murder in Maryland," Gibbs said. He leaned back slightly in his chair. "How'd he avoid trial?" 

"Copped a plea," Tony answered. He didn't look at either Tim or Gibbs; his eyes were locked on the picture of Stefano DelMar. "They dropped the charges when he promised he'd turn State's Witness and testify against his boss. The second the DA held up his end of the bargain, DelMar ran out on them. He never testified."

Tim lowered his eyebrows in confusion and looked back and forth between the plasma and Tony. "How did you find all of this? I've been digging for hours, and I couldn't find anything."

"I keep telling you, McGee. Smarter, not harder."

Tony could feel Gibbs looking at him, so he turned his head slightly. The knowing look on Gibbs' face, the hard set of his jaw and narrowed eyes, told Tony that he knew exactly where the information was coming from. 

"Why didn't they pursue him?" Gibbs asked.

Tony shrugged. "They got the convictions they were after without him. They'd just brought down an entire network of people who'd been murdering with impunity for decades, and in the grand scheme of things …" He sighed as he repeated the same words he'd been told a dozen times. "One punk kid whose worst crime is beating up an undercover cop just isn't worth worrying about."

"They underestimated him, huh?" Gibbs asked. Tony's only answer was a slight shrug. "Lot of that going around with this guy, it seems. So who was the boss?"

Tony couldn't keep looking at Gibbs, couldn't watch the understanding in his eyes turn to anger, so he looked over at Tim. As obvious as it was that Gibbs knew for certain what Tony was about to say, it was equally as obvious that Tim had no idea.

"Mike Macaluso."

Partial recognition dawned on Tim's face; he knew he'd heard the name before, but he wasn't sure where.

"And the cop?" 

Gibbs definitely knew who Stefano DelMar was now. At least, he'd heard about him before. Tony kept eye contact with Tim, not just because he didn't want to face Gibbs but also because he wanted to see how Tim reacted to what he was about to hear. 

"The one he tried to kill? The one he beat half to death with a metal pipe? The one he put in the hospital for a week and a half?" Tony swallowed hard as Tim looked up at him in horror. "Who was that?"

Tony nodded and closed his eyes. "Yeah," he said. He lifted his head and gave his boss a smile that he knew looked as fake as it felt. "That would be me."


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

"A metal pipe?" The look on Tim's face matched the tone of his voice – a rather impressive blend of shock, horror, and disbelief. "He tried to kill you?"

"Did a little more than try, McGee," Gibbs said tightly. He pushed himself to his feet and walked toward Tony, not stopping until he was standing right in front of him, only inches away. "Came damn close to doing it."

"Why?"

Tony forced himself to both meet Gibbs' eye and stand straight under the older man's scrutiny. They stood that way for several seconds, with Tim looking back and forth between them, until Tony finally glanced at him over Gibbs' shoulder.

"I told you, they get a little pissed when they find out you're a cop."

Gibbs was still watching him with narrowed eyes, and Tony had to put real effort into turning back to face him. He could feel himself withering under the hardened gaze, shrinking back from the anger in Gibbs' eyes.

"When were you going to tell me?" Gibbs demanded. He leaned forward and somehow managed, despite his shorter stature, to tower over Tony, who took an instinctive step back.

"Tell you what?"

"That the suspect you're pushing me to investigate wants you dead."

"Wanted," Tony said. He straightened his back and pushed his shoulders back in an effort to reassert his confidence. "Ten years ago. And I just did."

"You should have told me sooner."

Tony glanced at Tim, looking for backup. A sharp nod told him he had it. "I didn't know sooner. I don't spend my whole weekend watching ZNN like McAnchorman over there."

"Hey!"

"I had no idea that Stefano worked for Azari until ten minutes ago."

"How'd you find out?"

"McGee told me."

Gibbs shook his head. "We're turning this back over to the FBI." He stepped around Tony and headed toward the stairs to Vance's office.

Tony caught the look of worry and surprise on Tim's face, so he winked and smiled at him quickly in an attempt to put him back at ease. Then he turned around to continue his discussion, such as it was, with Gibbs.

"Why?" he asked of his boss' retreating back. "Why turn it over?"

Gibbs spun without slowing his steps and walked back to Tony, who – through an act of pure will – didn't back down again.

"What part of 'wants you dead' are you not getting here?"

"The part where it happened more than ten years ago, and he was a pissed off seventeen-year-old kid. Besides …" Tony grinned, something that only he would dare to do when Gibbs was that angry. "If we start handing over investigations every time a suspect wants to kill one of us, we're going to end up with a really small caseload."

"He's got a point, Boss." Tim's voice came from behind him, not far from his shoulder. "That does seem to happen to us a lot."

Gibbs' eyes moved from Tony to Tim and back again. He didn't look as irate as he had only moments before, but it was clear that he wasn't ready to back down completely yet. "Assault on a federal officer is FBI jurisdiction."

"I wasn't a federal officer," Tony said with a shake of his head. "I was just a cop." Gibbs started to bristle at the 'just a cop' part, so he pushed forward. "If I'm right, Boss, then he tortured and murdered two United States Marines, and that is our jurisdiction. Rob Brewer and Michael Strauss are our responsibility. Do you really trust the FBI to get them the justice they deserve?"

He could see Gibbs' mind turning, but he wasn't worried. He knew he had him. "You know that he knows who I am, right?"

Tony nodded his head slowly.

"And if he's been digging around, trying to figure me out …"

"He has been," Tony said with a nod. "Guarantee it."

"Then he already knows about you, Tony," Tim said.

"Yep." Tony cocked his head slightly and looked Gibbs straight in the eye. "Feel a lot better having you two watching my six than a dozen of Fornell's clowns."

Gibbs took another step forward, invading Tony's personal space even more than before, trying one last time to make him back down. Tony lifted his chin and stood his ground. 

"He contacts you, you tell me."

Tony nodded wordlessly.

"You hear anything, think anything, imagine anything, you have a freakin' bad dream about him, you tell me. Got it?"

"Got it, Boss."

Gibbs stepped back a bit, but raised his finger and pointed directly at Tony. "And you're hands-off. You stay out of this investigation."

Tony held his hands up in a clear sign of surrender, but he couldn't help the smile that tugged at the corners of his lips.

Gibbs swung his arm around and pointed at Tony's desk. "Sit." Tony did as he was told; Gibbs followed him to his chair. He gathered Tony's notes into a pile and scooped them up, then picked up Tony's cell phone and dropped it into his hands. "Play that."

Tim had moved toward Tony's desk with them, but as soon as Gibbs straightened up, he hurried back to his own. Gibbs stalked toward him and dropped Tony's notes in front of him. "McGee!"

Tony stifled a giggle when Tim jumped. Gibbs was standing a foot from him; there was no reason for him to yell. But then again, that was just one of those things that made Gibbs … Gibbs.

Gibbs tapped the stack of notes lightly with one finger and lowered his voice. "I'm going down to see Abby. I'll be back in half an hour. I want something by then."

"On it, Boss."

"Don't ask Tony for help."

"I wasn't planning …."

"And don't let him give you any."

Tony straightened in his chair; he hadn't thought of that. There were things that Gibbs and McGee needed to know, questions that he already knew the answers to. If they didn't ask him, they'd be wasting their time. "But, Boss, if I know …"

"Shut up, DiNozzo."

"Shutting up, Boss."

There was a grin on Gibbs' face as he turned away and headed for the elevator. Tony was fairly sure that he wasn't supposed to see it, so he pretended he didn't. Finally letting himself relax for the first time in over three hours, he leaned back in his chair, put his feet up on his desk, and flipped his phone open.

There were worse ways to end a day than getting paid to play Tetris.

* * *

Tony heaved a sigh as he walked across the parking lot. He was leaving early; Gibbs and Tim would be working for at least another hour.

It was his own fault, and he knew it. All he'd had to do was sit at his desk and play games on his phone until Gibbs said it was time to go home. All he'd had to do was stay as far away from the investigation as he could, both to keep himself out of danger if DelMar found out about him and to keep from being suspected of influencing the evidence. All he'd had to do was keep his damn mouth shut. For four hours. While Gibbs and Tim asked each other questions that he knew the answers to.

He was amazed Gibbs hadn't thrown him out sooner.

So he was leaving early, and all that was left to do was go home and sleep. When he came back in the morning, he'd be more careful. No matter how much he knew about whatever Gibbs and Tim were looking for, he wouldn't tell them. He had to admit that he had more than a passing interest in the outcome of the investigation, and he wanted to be there when the magic happened. If that meant he had to chew on his own tie to keep from talking, then that was what he'd do.

It wouldn't be the first time.

He switched his holster from his right hand to his left, pulled his keys out of his pocket, and pushed the button that unlocked his doors. When he heard the telltale beep from his car, he smiled to himself.

Yeah, he could do it.

He was so wrapped up in his thoughts that he didn't realize he wasn't alone until he heard rapid footsteps behind him and saw the blur of something flying over his head and past his face. He didn't even have time to wonder what it was before it was pulled tight against his neck from behind, cutting off his air. His keys and holster flew from his hands as he raised them to his throat. He tried to grab the rope and pull it away, but it was too tight, and he couldn't slip his fingers behind it. 

His keys and gun were useless, clanking and clattering on the ground at his feet. Acting on instinct, he stepped back with his right foot while leaning forward, but because he couldn't get his hands between the rope and his body, that only made the pressure on his neck worse. He changed tack quickly and tried to spin around to grab the hands that held the ends of the rope.

His attacker pulled harder, and Tony stumbled back. For a second, he hoped that he could throw the man off-balance enough to land them both on the ground, but it didn't work. The attacker saw it coming and compensated for the shift in Tony's weight, then stepped forward and pushed his chest against Tony's back. Not only did that keep Tony on his feet, but the closer proximity gave him extra leverage, and he pulled the rope even tighter.

Tony finally tried to call out for help, but the sound that left him was little more than a barely audible squeak. His lips were numb, his arms sluggish and heavy, his neck hurt like hell, and his chest already burning from lack of oxygen. His last hope rested on convincing his attacker that he'd passed out which, despite his past protestations to the contrary, he was dangerously close to doing. He let his arms fall to his sides and rolled his eyes as far back as he could before closing them, forcing his muscles to relax, and falling bonelessly against the man's chest.

"That wasn't so hard," a vaguely familiar voice said from somewhere to his left. 

The rope around his neck was loosened, though not removed completely, and Tony gasped as deep a breath as he could manage. He'd just opened his eyes to fight his way free when he saw the shadow of a second man move into his peripheral vision and felt the sting of a needle being inserted into the side of his neck just below his ear.

"Crap," he whispered as his eyes rolled back into his head for real. His original attacker stepped back and allowed him to crash to the ground.

_'Gibbs is gonna kill me.'_

Then his head slammed into the ground, and everything went dark.

* * *

His mind woke up before his body did, and it wasn't a pleasant sensation. He recognized the smell of his own car almost immediately, which would have brought him some comfort if not for the fact that he was laying – rather uncomfortably – facedown on the back seat. His head was pounding, though whether that came from whatever they'd drugged him with or lack of oxygen or bouncing off of the parking lot, he didn't know. The skin on his neck burned, but there was no rope wrapped around it, and for that much he supposed he should be grateful. Neither his hands nor his feet were tied, but as they simply refused to respond to his brain's commands to move, it really didn't matter.

He didn't know how long he lay like that, listening to the sound of the road beneath his ear, his eyes open to only slits, and unable to see the faces of the two men who sat in the front seats of his prized Mustang. It seemed like hours, though it had to have been only minutes, before the car pulled to a stop and the ignition was turned off.

Both doors opened, but only the driver's side door closed again. The passenger's seat was pulled forward and folded down, then two sets of rough hands grabbed his arms and ankles and dragged him into a semi-seated position, half-in and half-out of the car. Those same hands grasped his wrists tightly, yanked him to his feet, and took his weight so he'd stay that way. He was more hanging between them than standing – his arms were draped across their shoulders, and their holds on his wrists were the only reason he was upright.

"Aren't you going to look?" the voice he'd heard in the parking lot asked him. "Don't you want to know where you are?"

Tony raised his head slowly; it was a lot heavier than he remembered it being, and it was harder than it should have been to lift it. He blinked his eyes in confusion. He had to be hallucinating. What he was seeing couldn't possibly be real.

There was no way they were standing in front of Gibbs' house.

Then they were moving, dragging him between them, while he stared at the door that he knew they couldn't be walking toward. He heard snippets of words floating around him, words like 'drunk' and 'home' and 'buddy.' He had no idea who they were talking to. There was no point in lying to each other or to him, so that meant there had to be someone else there, right? He tried to look around so he could see who they were talking to, but he was too slow. By the time he managed to turn his head, they were alone on the front step.

It dawned on him that he hadn't seen either of their faces yet. He wanted to, knew he needed to, but he was so tired. His chin fell back to his chest; the effort required to hold it up was just too much.

The man on his left, who he'd pegged as the goon with the rope, lifted his foot and kicked open the imaginary door to Gibbs' imaginary house. When they crossed the threshold and rope guy kicked the door shut behind them, he couldn't help but notice how realistic his drugged hallucination was. When the two men dragged him through the living room and toward the kitchen, he started to wonder why it was Gibbs' house that his mind conjured up when he was in trouble and not his own.

When they stood at the top of Gibbs' basement stairs, when they let go of Tony's arms and gave him a shove, when he was tumbling and rolling down the steps and crashing to the concrete floor below … he finally realized that Gibbs' house wasn't as imaginary as he'd thought it was.

* * *

"I am truly grateful to you, Jethro."

Gibbs shook his head and smiled without taking his eyes from the road. "You already said that, Duck."

"I know, but I feel I must do so again. I know this might seem odd, with all of my various travels around this world, but I have never truly understood the menace of fruit flies. Had I known that they could be also be called 'potato flies,' perhaps I would have been more careful in choosing my produce at the market."

"It's fine," Gibbs said for the fourth time since they'd left the Navy Yard.

"It will never cease to amaze me how such a tiny creature can become such a large problem that a full-scale fumigation is required to eliminate them. It reminds me of the death of a man whose home was infested by lady beetles. Thousands of them had nested in the walls, and when the poor man died …"

Gibbs sighed as he turned the corner to his house. He'd listened to Ducky's stories a thousand times over, and he'd gotten good at letting him ramble on without actually paying attention to what he was saying. But when he pulled onto his street and saw what was sitting in front of his house, he tuned the older man out completely.

"Jethro?" Ducky had obviously noticed Gibbs' sudden distraction.

"What's he doing here?"

The strangeness of the question drew Ducky's attention to whatever Gibbs was staring at through the windshield. Confusion showed clearly on his face when he turned back around.

"Isn't that …?"

"DiNozzo's car." Gibbs pulled in behind the blue Mustang, turned off his headlights and killed the ignition before reaching for the door handle. "I sent him home two hours ago," he muttered tiredly.

"Perhaps he thought of some tidbit of information that might aid in your investigation."

Gibbs rolled his eyes as he pushed the door open. "He can't be part of this investigation, Duck. He knows that. And if he doesn't back off, he's going to piss me off enough to let the FBI handle it after all."

They got out of the car and approached the house, and Gibbs noticed immediately that the lights weren't on. Something in the pit of his stomach started churning, signaling danger. He pulled his Sig from its holster as he walked toward the house and gestured to Ducky with his other hand.

"Stay behind me," he said softly.

"Surely you don't think that Tony would …"

"Something's wrong." He stepped slowly onto the porch, keeping his gun ready in his right hand and pulling his cell phone out with his left. He dialed Tony's number, and he wasn't surprised when it went to voicemail after three rings. He hung up quickly and dialed again, but just as it started to ring, he noticed that his front door was hanging slightly crooked on its hinges. He stepped forward to inspect it more closely.

Then he heard the muted sound of running feet inside his house.

"Stay out here!" He tossed his cell phone to Ducky, turned back around, raised his foot, and kicked the battered down door open easily.

He entered the dark house with his gun aimed and wished he'd thought to grab the flashlight out of his car. The back door slammed shut just as he flipped the light switch, and he moved in that direction. Something on the kitchen floor caught his eye and stopped him in his tracks. Shoe prints – dark red shoe prints – led from his basement to his back door.

"Duck, step inside," he called out.

Ducky was in the house immediately, and he crossed the living room and dining room quickly. "Jethro?" he asked. "Who was that running? Was it Tony?"

Gibbs shook his head slowly, then looked down at the red marks on the floor. Ducky followed his gaze and bent down for a closer inspection.

"This looks like blood."

Gibbs nodded his head in agreement and moved toward the basement door. He couldn't explain how, but he knew that someone was still down there.

"Are you sure that's wise?" Ducky whispered. "Shouldn't we call for …?"

Gibbs shook his head again and put his finger to his lips silently. He motioned for Ducky to stay where he was, raised his gun in front of him, and stepped through the door. He pressed his back against the wall as he descended the first few steps, leading the way with his gun, until he reached the step that gave him a view of the entire basement.

"Ducky!"

He was already running down the stairs when he heard Ducky's rapid footsteps behind him, no doubt driven by Gibbs calling out his name in the closest thing to panic he'd ever heard. He jumped down the last few steps and bolted across the floor.

"Dear God," Ducky breathed behind him.

Gibbs skidded to a halt just short of the blood that had pooled on the floor and stared in horror at the sight before him.

He'd seen it before – less than a week before. A body hanging, suspended from the rafters by thick rope around the wrists. The blood-splattered remains of a white shirt that hung in tattered strips from the waist of blood-stained jeans. What looked to be dozens of shallow cuts and slices on the arms and chest, all of them oozing more precious blood. A battered face, a knotted gag tied tightly enough to cut the sides of the mouth, and closed eyes. A head that hung forward limply, lifelessly, chin resting against a bruised chest. A screwdriver that protruded from the front of the leg.

There were differences, too. They were minor, but his mind processed them just the same. The arms were spread wide, straight out to the side, rather than above the head. The feet that barely brushed the basement floor were bare, but the ankles were tied together rather than hanging free. The deep red mark around the throat was evidence of a forceful strangulation, a level of violence the others hadn't been subjected to.

So few differences, so many things the same, and from the first heartbeat after he'd seen it, he knew who'd done it.

But the biggest difference was the one he couldn't bring himself to verbalize, no matter how hard he tried. His lips opened and closed, but no words came out. He was shaking his head and could feel his whole body start to tremble. He couldn't say it. He couldn't believe it. This was no Marine. This was no Naval officer. This was no anonymous member of the military.

This body, this person, this man, this victim …

"Anthony."


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

Gibbs was at war with himself.

The investigator in him was telling him to stay back, don't touch anything until Ducky said so, get a camera and take pictures, put on gloves before he did anything else. His mind was thinking about the evidence, the measurements, the sketches that would have to be done, the trace that would need to be collected. His eyes scanned every inch of the basement, from the blood on the floor, to Tony's shoes on the workbench, to the blood-coated tools in the toolbox.

The rest of him was screaming at him that it was his basement, his floor, his workbench, his tools. That it was Tony and nothing else mattered. That he had to stop thinking and processing like it was some random stranger. That he had to get over there and cut Tony the hell down.

_'Move your ass, Gunny! Now!'_

It was a short battle.

He did his best to avoid the blood, but there was so much of it, dark red puddles everywhere, and he knew that he contaminated some of it. He chastised himself for destroying evidence that they would need to nail the bastard who'd … but there were more important things to worry about. 

His eyes and past experiences told him that it was over, that Tony was gone, and that his basement had just become the crime scene in a murder investigation. But the rest of him had to know for sure. He'd never believe it if he didn't find out for himself.

He lifted one shaking hand and pressed two fingers against the side of Tony's neck. He closed his eyes, held his breath, and concentrated. Then he spun around frantically to find Ducky, who was still standing on the steps with Gibbs' cell phone at his ear.

"He's alive!"

"Yes," Gibbs heard him say. "An ambulance to that address, immediately."

He left Ducky to finish his conversation, turned back around and moved his hand to the side of Tony's face. "Stay with me, DiNozzo," he said softly. "You do not have permission to go anywhere." He pulled his knife out of his pocket and reached for the rope that secured Tony's left wrist to the rafter.

He didn't give another thought to the crime scene he was destroying.

A hand on his arm stopped him. He didn't remember Ducky coming down the stairs, and he hadn't heard him dragging the chair across the floor, even though he'd obviously done both. But it didn't matter. There was only one thing that mattered.

"I have to get him down," he said, pulling his arm away from Ducky roughly, ignoring the desperation that tinged his own voice.

"Yes, we do." Gibbs was amazed at how calm his friend seemed. "But I should cut the ropes. That way you can …" No, Ducky wasn't as calm as he appeared on the outside. Gibbs could see it in his eyes, hear it in the way his voice caught in his throat. "You have to catch him," he said softly. "I'm not strong enough."

"Neither am I."

He didn't realize he'd actually said it out loud until Ducky squeezed his arm.

"Yes, you are," Ducky said. "And we're wasting time."

Gibbs put the knife in Ducky's outstretched palm and turned back to Tony. He wrapped one arm around him, braced his left arm with the other, and steadied himself to take the extra weight that was coming. He ignored the sticky wetness of Tony's back, pretended that it wasn't Tony's blood slowly coating his arms and soaking into the front of his shirt.

"Got you, Tony," he whispered. "I've got you."

"Be very careful of his leg," Ducky said. "We can't afford to let that screwdriver become dislodged."

Gibbs refused to look at the man in his arms as Ducky cut through the first rope and moved the chair to start on the second. He refused to let himself see any more damage than he already had. He refused to think about anything other than holding him up. If he dropped him, if he let him go, if he didn't catch him when he fell …

Then Tony was down, arms hanging limply at his sides, his body a dead weight in Gibbs' arms.

 _'Not a body!'_ he scolded himself. _'Not dead!'_

Gibbs tightened his arms and tucked Tony's head against his shoulder. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the almost inaudible sounds of Tony's far-too-shallow breaths.

"Keep breathing," he whispered. "Don't stop."

"Blanket," Ducky said sharply.

"Under the stairs."

It took only seconds for Ducky to grab the blanket and spread it out. Then Gibbs was lowering Tony to the floor, ignoring the way his knees screamed at him, cradling the back of Tony's neck, keeping the younger man pressed tightly against his chest, pretending not to notice how unresisting and still and lifeless Tony's body was. Ducky helped as much as he could, straightening Tony's legs carefully so as to avoid jarring the screwdriver, then moving around to give extra support behind his shoulders. 

Through it all, Tony didn't make a sound. He didn't open his eyes. He didn't so much as twitch.

The second they had him settled on the floor, Ducky handed Gibbs back his knife then took full command of the situation.

"Another blanket, Jethro."

Gibbs pushed up from the floor wordlessly and went to the stairs. Ducky kept talking as he busied himself checking Tony's vitals.

"His breathing is shallow and rapid, he's sweating, and he's very pale. If he's not already in hypovolemic shock, he's dangerously close to it. We have to keep him warm." He helped Gibbs spread the second blanket out and pulled it all the way to Tony's shoulders. "Elevate his feet, carefully."

Gibbs knelt down, cut the rope around Tony's ankles, and propped his feet on the bottom rung of the chair Ducky had used. Then he sat back on his heel, closed the knife, and rubbed his forehead. He neither noticed nor cared that his hand was covered in blood, that he was smearing it all over his face. "How much …?"

"Delayed capillary refill," Ducky said, cutting Gibbs off in mid-question. "His heart rate is far too high. The ligature mark on his neck is cause for concern, and there are petechiae around his mouth and eyes, but he is breathing. That screwdriver needs to be stabilized; I'll make certain that the paramedics do so. If I only had my bag, I could do so much more for the poor boy."

Gibbs shook his head. He couldn't listen to much more. He couldn't stand to hear Ducky talking about Tony the way he talked about the corpses on his autopsy table.

Ducky lifted the blanket so he could do a cursory examination of the cuts on Tony's bare chest. Gibbs had only taken a quick glance of his own before they cut him down, and as much as he'd gone out of his way to avoid doing more than that, he had to see exactly what damage had been done. Every last cut, every last bruise, every last drop of blood – he had to know them all, what they were, where they'd come from, and what they'd been caused by. 

Someone was going to pay for all of it.

"I see at least twenty," Ducky finally said. "Three on the inside of his right arm, five on his left. There are several more on his chest, but the blood is making it hard to see …" He stopped long enough to take a deep breath. "I didn't see if he has any on his back."

"He does." Gibbs looked down at his own arms and hands and the blood that coated them. "Believe me."

Ducky nodded tensely as he pulled the blanket back up over Tony again and tucked it under his shoulders. "Controlled and precise strokes. They appear to be in groupings, perhaps in a pattern of sorts, which I have no doubt that you will figure out later." He managed a weak smile which Gibbs didn't return. "They're shallower than those suffered by Lance Corporal Brewer."

"Maximum pain and blood loss possible without death," Gibbs said softly. He looked at Tony's face, and immediately noticed that the gag was still in place. His skin crawled at the sight of it, and he opened his knife again. "Pain and fear and …"

"Torture."

Gibbs finished cutting through the gag, lifted Tony's head from the floor to remove it, then threw the offensive rag aside in revulsion. He used his thumb to gently wipe some of the blood away from the corners of Tony's mouth. His hands were shaking, and he willed them to still, but it did no good. 

"With my tools," he whispered. "In my basement."

"Jethro." Ducky's voice held a warning, which Gibbs ignored.

"How much of his blood is on my floor, Duck?" He asked it without looking up, his voice growing louder and more insistent with every word. "How long was he here? How many times did he …?"

"Jethro!" 

Gibbs finally raised his head. 

"The ambulance will be here at any moment. You need to go upstairs and guide the EMTs down here."

"No," Gibbs said, shaking his head. "I'm not leaving him."

"You have to." Ducky's voice was low again, calm and soothing. Gibbs hated the way he was acting, hated that Ducky had to talk to him like that, but he couldn't seem to make himself stop. Ducky was holding his cell phone out to him, and he took it silently. "You have phone calls to make, and someone has to meet the paramedics at the door."

Gibbs looked away from Tony long enough to glance at the basement door, but he turned back quickly, indecision plain on his face.

"You found him in time," Ducky said. "And he won't be left alone. I'll take care of him for you, Jethro. I promise."

He was being ridiculous, and he knew it. He was Leroy Jethro "second-b-for-bastard" Gibbs, a battle-hardened Marine and a seasoned investigator. He'd lost team members before, lost men and women in battle, studied dead bodies for a living, and he knew what to do in a crisis. So why couldn't he make himself do it? Why couldn't he set his feelings aside and do what needed to be done? Why was he having so much trouble just going up the damn stairs to get the paramedics?

 _'Because it's one of your kids,'_ his mind supplied. _'Because it's Tony.'_

"Jethro."

Gibbs swallowed hard, nodded, and squeezed Tony's arm one last time. "You better be here when I get back, DiNozzo," he said. "You just … you stay here."

Then he pushed himself to his feet, walked to the stairs, and ran up them without looking back.

He didn't see Ducky behind him, leaning down to place his hand gently against Tony's cheek. He didn't see the unshed tears in the older man's eyes or hear the words that he spoke.

"That is one order that I am in full agreement with, my dear boy, and I do expect you to follow it."

* * *

Tim saw the ambulance speeding away as he rounded the corner to Gibbs' house, and his car screeched to a halt in the space that it had just vacated. He barely waited for the tires to stop moving before he was out and running toward the open front door.

"Boss?" he called out as he entered the familiar house. Hearing no immediate response, he tried again. "Gibbs!"

The phone call had scared him. It wasn't that he'd been called at ten o'clock at night, because that happened all the time. And it wasn't that it had something to do with Tony, because that had happened before, too. The fact that he'd been summoned to Gibbs' house rather than the Navy Yard was more than a little alarming, but he'd recovered well.

No, it was the fact that Gibbs himself had sounded scared, almost frantic, almost desperate. His voice had been so quiet and shaky that Tim hadn't even understood everything he said. Gibbs never sounded like that - not when his stalker was trying to kill Abby, not when they'd lost Pacci, not even when Kate died. Combining the sound of his boss's voice with the late night phone call, the fact that something had happened to Tony, and the fact that it had happened at Gibbs' house resulted in only one possible reaction.

Tim McGee was terrified.

He rushed through the house and found Gibbs standing in the kitchen, in front of the basement door, staring down the stairs. He didn't look like he'd heard Tim at all.

"Boss?"

Gibbs turned toward him slowly, and Tim's heart plunged into his stomach. Gibbs was covered in blood – the front of his shirt and pant legs looked like they'd been soaked in it, and it was smeared on his face, in his hair, and on his hands. He bolted across the room, grabbed Gibbs' shoulders, and started patting him down, trying to find where it was coming from.

"Where are you hurt?" he demanded. "How bad is it? Why'd the ambulance leave without you? What happened?"

Gibbs grabbed his hands and pushed them away. "Get off me, McGee!"

Tim stood back and dropped his hands to his sides at once; this still wasn't the Gibbs he knew, but he was closer. "You're not hurt, are you, Boss?" he asked.

Gibbs shook his head, then looked down at himself. His eyes widened as though he were just noticing what his clothes looked like, and he started wiping at them absently.

"It's not mine," he said.

Tim swallowed. If the blood wasn't Gibbs', and whatever happened had something to do with Tony, then …

"Tony's?" he asked softly. Gibbs nodded, and Tim took a deep breath. "The ambulance that just left …?"

"Ducky went with him."

"What the hell happened?"

Gibbs looked up at him, looked him straight in the eyes, with an expression Tim had never seen on his face before. He couldn't even say what it was for sure. Horror? Fear? The only answer he got to his question was a shake of Gibbs' head, almost like whatever had happened, whatever he'd seen, he was completely unable to talk about it.

Tim shot a quick glance at the basement door, saw the bloody footprints on the floor leading away from it, and he knew where the answers to his questions were. He started forward, intent on finding out for himself, but Gibbs grabbed his arm and stopped him.

"Don't."

Tim shook his head. "I can handle it, Gibbs. Whatever it is."

Gibbs snorted, as if to say, _'No, you can't,'_ but out loud he said, "It's a crime scene, McGee. You can't go down there yet."

Tim tilted his head in confusion. "You don't want me to process it?"

"We can't," Gibbs said. He took a deep breath before continuing. "This time, he is a federal officer. FBI's jurisdiction."

"What?" Tim couldn't believe the rage that swelled up in him. "But it's Tony! I don't have to know what happened to know that he's hurt. Bad enough that he left here in an ambulance, and you're covered in his blood, and you're telling me we're not going to …?"

"Do you want the bastard to pay, Tim?" Gibbs' voice was low, dangerous. He'd heard it a hundred times before.

"Of course I do." He answered automatically, but it was true. He didn't have to know any details to know that. Someone had gone after his partner, his friend, and had hurt him. The how and why and how badly didn't matter. 

No one messed with his team. 

"Of course I do," he repeated, more emphatically than before.

"Then we don't touch it," Gibbs said. "Fornell's already on his way. It's his crime scene, and we stay out of it. We can watch, and we will." The last was said with emphasis and meaning, which Tim picked up on. "But that's it."

"Okay," Tim said, reluctantly but with understanding. He looked toward the basement door again, and he started to doubt that he wanted to go downstairs by himself, anyway. 

Whatever had happened down there was bad enough that Gibbs was completely, well, un-Gibbs-like. The thought of what could do that was starting to scare him again, and with good reason. Jethro Gibbs' team was the third rail; no one touched them. If someone did, Gibbs reacted with anger and a single-minded desire for revenge. He didn't get scared. He didn't get desperate. He protected his team, his 'kids,' and he stood strong and defiant at their sides even as he moved heaven and hell to punish whoever had hurt them. Speaking of which …

"Why are you still here?"

"It's my house, McGee," Gibbs said. "Where else would I be?" He sighed deeply and leaned against the kitchen counter at his back. "I'm waiting for Tobias."

Tim shook his head and turned away quickly. No, that wasn't right. Maybe he couldn't fix what had happened to Tony, but he could fix that.

He'd been in the house often enough to know exactly where he was going. He was gone for less than two minutes, and Gibbs was still standing against the counter when he returned. Tim shoved the bundle he'd gathered from the bedroom into Gibbs' arms and stepped back.

"Get changed and go," he said. "I'll wait for Agent Fornell."

Gibbs stared down at the clothes in his hands, then looked back up at Tim in confusion.

"I can handle things here. There's somewhere else you need to be right now."

"McGee …"

Tim forced himself to smile, his way of trying to soothe Gibbs' obviously raw nerves. "I've got your six, Boss," he said softly. "Tony needs you to have his."

* * *

Five minutes later, Gibbs was standing in the front door, hair still wet from an incredibly quick shower, giving Tim one last round of instructions before he went.

"I've got it," he said. "Do you really want me to tell him who ...?"

"Why not?" Gibbs asked. "He needs a suspect, and we've got one for him."

"But we've got no proof it's him."

"Yet," Gibbs replied. "No proof yet. We will." He took two steps out the door but stopped on the porch, glanced back over his shoulder, and looked Tim directly in the eye. "I want DelMar, Tim," he said under his breath. "I want the son of a bitch."

Tim squared his shoulders and straightened his back. "If it's him, so do I."

Gibbs turned without another word and jogged to his car.

Tim stood in the open front door and watched the yellow Charger peel away from the curb and roar down the street. As he was turning to go back inside, he noticed for the first time that the door was hanging awkwardly on its hinges and the frame had been ripped partway away from the wall. He shook his head sadly and looked back toward the kitchen. As much as he knew that he'd have to go to the basement when Fornell arrived, and as close as he'd come to doing it when he first arrived, he didn't want to anymore.

He wanted to go with Gibbs. He wanted to see Tony. He wanted to be with Ducky when he called Palmer and Abby. But he had a job to do, and at that moment, he was the only member of his team who could do it.

He walked back into the kitchen, pressed his back against the wall, and slid to the floor. He sat there for a few moments, just staring at the open basement door, before he lifted his hand and ran his fingers through his hair. He rested his forehead against his arm and closed his eyes.

"God damn it, Tony," he whispered to himself.

He thought of his team again, of how upset Gibbs was and how upset Abby would be when she found out. Maybe he couldn't be with them at the hospital, but he didn't have to be alone. There was still one member of his team he could reach out to. It wasn't just for his own comfort, but for hers, and for everyone else's. If no one told her what had happened, she'd kill them all the moment she found out.

He pulled out his cell phone and dialed the number almost without looking.

"Good morning, McGee." He had to smile at the sound of her voice, even if it fell away quickly. She obviously wasn't expecting bad news that early in the morning, and she was not going to take this well.

"Tony's hurt." Maybe he should have eased into it, asked her if she was enjoying her vacation, at least tried some small talk, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. Besides, Ziva had never been one to insist on sugar-coating or dancing around the truth. She'd want to hear it as directly as possible. 

"How badly?" The lightness of familiarity that had been in her voice when she first answered was gone, and in its place was the straight-forward, fact-seeking tone of an investigator. "What happened?"

"Bad," he said. "I didn't see him, but Gibbs was covered in his blood." The gasp on the other end of the line told him that was another one of those things he probably should have eased into, but there was no way to fix it. 

"It's bad, Ziva. It's really, really bad."


	4. Chapter 4

* * *

The conversation with Ziva was short, and she'd hung up with a promise that she was coming back. He'd half-heartedly tried to talk her out of it, a token protest that neither of them believed. He'd known from the moment he started dialing that she'd be on her way home as soon as she heard what had happened. She needed to be there just as badly as they needed her to be.

He was still sitting against the kitchen wall when Fornell walked through the door ten minutes later. He didn't stand up and greet him, because that would put him that much closer to going into the basement. He'd been mentally preparing himself for the worst since he'd gotten off the phone, but he still wasn't ready.

"Gibbs?" Fornell called out from the living room. "Jethro?"

Tim sighed. He was going to have to deal with Fornell sooner or later, and he was going to have to go down in that basement. Avoiding it wasn't doing anything but delaying the inevitable.

"In here, Agent Fornell."

Fornell walked into the kitchen quickly and looked down at him. "McGee," he said in surprise. "What are you doing here? Where's Gibbs?"

"At the hospital with Tony." He took another deep breath and pushed himself to his feet.

Fornell's expression softened. "How is DiNozzo?" he asked sincerely.

"Alive, last I knew," Tim said. "That was about twenty minutes ago."

Fornell was shocked, and it showed plainly on his face. "All you know is that he's alive?"

Tim shrugged and walked across the room, carefully avoiding the bloody shoe prints and stopping in the same place Gibbs had stood before. He stared down the stairs with the same far-away look in his eyes. "From what I gather, we're lucky to have that much."

"From what you gather?" Fornell stepped closer to him. "You mean you don't know?" 

Tim shook his head silently. 

"Gibbs didn't tell you what happened?" 

Another negative. "Did he tell you?" Tim asked without looking at him.

"Not a damn thing," Fornell admitted with a huff. "All I got was, 'Someone tried to kill DiNozzo. Get your ass over here.'"

Tim had to smile at that, at least a little. "That's more than I got." He looked up and around, noticing for the first time that Fornell was alone. "Where's your team?"

Fornell walked to the basement door but stopped just short of going through it. "Four best agents I've got are on their way. They'll be here soon." He glanced across his shoulder at Tim and gestured at the stairs. "You been down yet?"

Tim shook his head. "Don't really want to, either."

"Do you know what's down there?"

"No idea. It's bad, though. Gibbs had Tony's blood all over him." 

Fornell perked up a bit at that, and Tim smirked. 

"He showered and changed before he left," he said. "They're in that bag on the table." Fornell glanced back into the dining room as Tim talked. "We knew you'd need them." 

"How many people do we have to exclude?"

"Should be four, not counting Tony. Gibbs, Ducky, and two EMTs."

Fornell turned back to face him. "He's damn lucky they found him, huh?"

"Lucky," Tim said with a snort. "Yeah. That's what he is." He sighed and pushed himself away from the counter. "Let's get this over with." He stepped forward, but Fornell's hand on his chest stopped him.

"Bloody footprints on the floor, DiNozzo's blood all over Gibbs, and don't tell me you didn't notice how freaked out your boss is." 

Tim nodded slowly.

"Are you ready for this, McGee?"

"No," he answered honestly. "But I don't think it really matters. Do you?"

Fornell nodded and stepped back. Tim gestured at the door.

"After you, Agent Fornell. It's your crime scene."

Fornell's expression was one of pleasant surprise. "It is? Really? You're not going to fight for it?"

Fornell started down the stairs, and Tim followed just a few steps behind. Both were careful to avoid the remains of the footprints that hadn't been destroyed in the rush to get Tony to the hospital.

"By the book," Tim said. "FBI's jurisdiction. Gibbs wants this guy, no mistakes."

"Then why are you here?" Fornell stopped on the stairs and turned to face him.

Tim tilted his head and raised his eyebrows.

"Oh," Fornell said in understanding. "You're babysitting?"

"I'm observing," Tim insisted.

Fornell smirked and started walking again. "I've been doing this for a long time, McGee," he said. "I'm not some damn probie who's going to puke at the sight of blood, and I know what I'm doing. I'm not going to screw it up."

Tim opened his mouth to answer, but the sight of the basement froze the words in his throat.

"Good God."

Fornell stood stock still after his breathless exclamation, so Tim moved past him silently and continued down the stairs. He didn't know what he'd say if he opened his mouth, wasn't really sure that he'd be able to speak at all, so he didn't even try. He scanned the room as objectively as he could, but he knew it was hopeless. No matter how much he'd grown as an investigator, no matter how desensitized to blood and violence he thought he'd become, he still had to fight to hold down the bile rising in his throat.

"You're sure he was alive when he left here?" The skepticism and doubt in Fornell's voice were obvious.

Tim nodded wordlessly as Fornell walked up beside him.

"We're going to find out who did this, McGee."

A sense of deja vu washed across him, and for a second, he was standing in Rob Brewer's garage. He looked at the blood-splattered tools in the toolbox, but instead of Jack Kale's, they were Gibbs'. He heard Brewer's neighbor, the way her voice shook when she talked to them, but then it was Gibbs on the phone, his voice every bit as shaky. He heard himself joking with Palmer about who was going to cut and who was going to catch, and couldn't even imagine Ducky and Gibbs having that conversation about Tony. His heart pounded in his chest, and he blinked, shook his head, and swallowed hard.

"Stefano DelMar."

Fornell turned toward him in surprise. "What? Azari's bodyguard?" Tim nodded again. "Why do you think it's him?"

"Long story," Tim said. The look on Fornell's face said that he needed more than that. "He's tried to kill Tony before."

"When?" 

"Baltimore. Ten years ago." Tim couldn't stop staring at the toolbox, couldn't help but take note of which tools were covered in blood, which ones he'd given Gibbs as gifts, which ones Tony had … He swallowed again. "We just started looking into him as a suspect in the Brewer and Strauss murders. I'll give you what we have so far."

Fornell pulled a pair of gloves from his pocket and put them on as he walked deeper into the basement, leaving Tim standing at the bottom of the stairs. "I'll be able to access Gibbs' and Dr. Mallard's fingerprints to exclude them," he said. He stepped up to the toolbox and looked down at it. "I'll need their shoes, though. Did Gibbs leave his in the bag?"

Tim didn't answer. His eyes were moving around the room slowly, and his brain was trying to process it all at once. The puddles of blood on the floor, the remains of the ropes that hung from the ceiling beams, Tony's shoes sitting on the end of Gibbs' workbench … 

"McGee?"

The blankets that Gibbs sometimes slept under, blood-splattered, laying on the floor soaking up even more. The wheel tracks the stretcher had left behind in the partially congealed blood. The ghostly, imagined echoes of Tony's screams, bouncing back and forth between walls that had absorbed them all when no one else had heard him … 

"McGee? You all right over there?"

The screwdriver set he'd given Gibbs for Christmas the year before, open on the floor, with one screwdriver missing. The antique handsaw that Tony had spent months trying to find – the one he almost hadn't given him because it hadn't been delivered until just before Father's Day – the blade splashed with varying shades of bright red and dark brown, sitting atop the toolbox. The wooden-handled chisels that Abby had given him for his birthday, the hammer that Ziva had given him for the last Marine Corps birthday, the hand plane that Ducky had given him just because. All of them scattered around the spot where Tony had been tortured, all of them spattered and soaked and stained with blood.

Tony's blood.

"Hey!" Suddenly, Fornell was directly in front of him, both hands on his shoulders, shaking him lightly. "Look at me, Tim." He blinked and made his eyes focus on the familiar face. "Are you okay?"

He took a deep breath and forced himself to acknowledge Fornell's concern with a nod.

"You sure? You're not gonna pass out on me, are you?"

He shook his head, and glanced past Fornell to take in the scene one more time. He still couldn't look away, but it didn't have the same effect on him it had only seconds before. He felt his resolve harden, and he straightened his shoulders. For maybe the first time in his life, Tim understood why Gibbs got the way he did when someone threatened the people he cared about, understood the kind of protectiveness that could fuel single-minded obsession, understood what it felt like to have nothing but hatred and a need for revenge coursing through his veins. 

Yes, that was Tony's blood on the floor, and the man who put it there was going to pay for every single drop of it.

"We want the bastard, Fornell," he finally said, his voice as low and dangerous as Gibbs' had ever been. Fornell let his hands fall to his sides and took a step back when Tim locked narrowed, hatred-filled eyes on him. 

"Do not screw this up."

* * *

Tony had finally woken up in the ambulance. It made Gibbs feel somewhat better to know that he'd done it on his own, but according to Ducky, it hadn't been good. He'd fought and struggled with everything he had to get away from the unfamiliar hands, but he was too weak. He'd thrown his head back, and closed his eyes, and screamed. 

He'd screamed Gibbs' name. Cried out for Gibbs to help him, to save him, to make it stop, to be there. And he hadn't been.

Again.

It was the one thing that he'd allowed to dominate his thoughts for the past two hours. Focusing on what he hadn't been witness to was keeping his mind from wandering back to the basement, to what he'd seen and what he'd done. What he hadn't done. What he'd allowed to happen. 

"Stop that, Jethro." Ducky chided him softly from the chair across from him.

"Stop what?"

"Thinking whatever it is you're thinking." Ducky took a sip of the tea he'd gotten from the vending machine across the hall and made a face. "I will never understand why you Americans insist on calling this disgusting liquid tea. Real tea could not possibly come from a metal box, because it requires …"

"Ducky, please," Gibbs said softly as he closed his eyes. "Not right now."

Ducky nodded. "Of course. My apologies." He stood up, moved to the chair at Gibbs' side, and sat down again. "But my point stands. What happened is bad enough. You wallowing in your imagined missteps isn't making anything better."

"Wallowing, Duck?" he asked, incredulous. "Is that what I'm doing? Wallowing?"

"Is there another word for it?"

Silence descended around them, heavy with words unspoken, until Gibbs broke it again. "I wasn't there."

"But you were, Jethro. When it mattered the most, you were there."

"No, I wasn't!" Gibbs pushed himself out of his chair and crossed the room to the window. "Because if I'd been there, he wouldn't be here."

"You didn't know," Ducky pointed out. "You were at the office, and as far as you knew, Tony was at his apartment. You didn't know what was happening to him."

"I should have."

"How? Are you meant to read minds now?" Ducky sighed. "You found him in time. You saved his life."

"You found him," he argued. "And you saved him. Not me."

Ducky sat up straighter in his chair. "This is what's bothering you?" He sounded angry, and Gibbs didn't blame him. He was angry with himself, too. "Anthony was very near to dying when we walked into that basement, might still well be for all we know, and you're upset because you think you lost some kind of competition?"

"No!" He stared out the window, at the lights of the city below. "I don't know who the person in that basement with you was, Duck, but it sure as hell wasn't me. I was going to cut him down myself, and what? Let him fall? I argued with you about getting the paramedics. I wasn't thinking; I couldn't function. I froze up. I contaminated the crime scene …"

"You were quite rightly upset." Ducky's voice had softened considerably. "As was I. But I do not believe for a moment that you did anything wrong. Anthony's life is more important than any crime scene."

"What if I destroyed the one piece of evidence we needed to convict DelMar? What if I'm the reason we can't get him?"

"Let me worry about that part, Gibbs." Gibbs and Ducky turned toward the door and the two people standing in it. "You worry about DiNozzo."

"Agent Fornell," Ducky said, rising to his feet to greet the new arrivals. "Timothy."

"Hey, Ducky," Tim said in return. He turned his full attention to Gibbs. "How is he?"

"Still in surgery." Gibbs stepped forward and shook Fornell's hand, then looked at Tim. He could see the rawness of pain and anger in the younger agent's eyes, the devastation that he was trying to hide, and he squeezed his upper arm. It wasn't just Tony that he'd abandoned; he'd checked out on Tim, too. Walking into the basement would have been hell, and no one knew that better than he did. He never should have let him go down there unprepared. 

"You okay, Tim?"

"Surgery?" Tim's eyes widened. If he'd heard the question he'd been asked, he gave no sign of it. "For what?"

"For their ease and his comfort," Ducky said. "Treatment for his wounds would require a great number of sutures and the rapid infusion of several units of blood. The operating theater is best equipped to perform both of those procedures, in addition to giving them access to anesthesia, which became necessary once he regained consciousness."

"He was awake?" Another new voice, one immediately known to everyone in the room. "That's a good sign, isn't it? He's going to be okay, right? Tell me he's going to be okay, Gibbs."

Gibbs held his arms out to Abby as she crossed the room to him. He wrapped them around her and glanced across her shoulder at the man who'd walked through the door behind her.

"I'm sorry, Agent Gibbs. She insisted on coming. If I hadn't picked her up, she'd have driven herself, and I didn't think …"

"It's okay, Palmer," Gibbs said. 

Abby stepped back, grabbed one of Gibbs' hands in both of hers, and looked him in the eye. "You haven't told me yet. Tell me he's going to be all right."

He wanted to answer her. There was nothing he wanted to do more than reassure her that Tony was going to be fine, but he couldn't, because he didn't know. He didn't know if they'd been able to stop the blood loss in time, didn't know if they were replacing it fast enough, didn't know if he had any other injuries that they didn't know about yet. He didn't know what was under the bruises on his chest and head, didn't know if his throat had swollen closed or if he was still breathing on his own, didn't know if his heart was still beating. 

He didn't know anything except that his shower hadn't gotten all of Tony's blood out from under his fingernails, and that with Abby holding his hand, he was suddenly aware of just how much of it was still there.

Ducky noticed his difficulty and stepped forward. "Abigail," he said gently. "Anthony's condition is very serious, and I'm afraid that we do not yet know the full extent of it. But he is in the very best of hands right now, and I'm certain the doctor will be along any moment."

"Okay," she said. She let go of Gibbs' hand reluctantly and stepped away. "Okay."

It was plain that Abby was anything but okay, and everyone in the waiting room knew it. Tim ran his hand up and down her back, Palmer rubbed her arm, and Ducky reached for her hand. None of them were okay, either, and it showed. And Gibbs couldn't do anything to help them. None of them. No matter how much he wanted to. Because the truth was that he was the least okay person in the room. He turned away from them and looked out the window again.

"Gibbs?"

He'd forgotten that Fornell was there. He turned at the summons, saw the notepad in the FBI agent's hand, and sighed.

"Now?" he asked tiredly. "Really? It can't wait?"

Fornell shook his head sadly. "You know it can't. I need it while it's still fresh in your mind."

"I'm never going to forget it, Tobias," he insisted. "Ask me tomorrow, or next week, or next year. It'll still be there."

Abby's eyes started filling with tears, and Palmer and Tim stared at him in open shock. Gibbs sighed deeply and looked down at his hands again. Ducky seemed to be the only one unaffected by the uncharacteristically candid declaration. "Abigail, Mr. Palmer, would you accompany me to the cafeteria?" he asked, leading them toward the door as he did. "I missed dinner this evening, and I'm afraid this old body is beginning to feel the effects."

They both nodded and went with him silently. He looked back over his shoulder, and Gibbs forced himself to give the older man a tight smile of gratitude. 

"Timothy? Will you be coming with us?"

Tim looked back and forth between Ducky and Gibbs, almost as though he was considering it, but he shook his head. "I'll be down in a bit, Ducky. Think I'm gonna stay here for a while."

"I'll be wanting to talk to you, too, Dr. Mallard," Fornell said.

"Very well," Ducky said. "You know where I'll be when you need me."

Gibbs didn't know if those words were meant for Fornell or him. He didn't know if Tim was staying because he'd ordered him to supervise the investigation or because he didn't think Gibbs could handle the questioning alone. Normally, he'd have been angry about those two things; at that moment, he really didn't care.

As soon as the other three were gone from the door, Fornell turned to face him. "You want to sit down?"

"Why?" he asked. "Is it going to make it any easier?"

Fornell shook his head, and Tim spoke up. "Boss, please. You know this has to happen. You're the best witness he's got. If you really want to get DelMar …"

"I'll stand," he said, cutting off Tim's speech. It wasn't like he hadn't heard it a hundred times, hadn't said it to a thousand witnesses himself. "I'm fine." He took a deep breath and leaned back against the windowsill. Tim and Fornell both turned chairs to face him and sat down. "What'd you get at the house?"

"A lot," Fornell said. "We had to collect most of your tools. I'm sorry about that, but we'll get them back to you as soon as we can."

"Take them all if you think it'll help," he said. "Keep them. I don't think I'll use them again anyway."

"The blood evidence goes without saying." Fornell continued on like Gibbs hadn't interrupted. "We sampled everything, took pictures of all the footprints, both upstairs and down. We dusted for fingerprints, but I've got a feeling all of them are going to be eliminated once we cross-check them against your team."

"Probably," Gibbs admitted.

"DiNozzo's shoes and jacket, the rope from the ceiling and what was left on the floor. Agent McGee tells me that it might be the same rope used on Brewer and Strauss."

Gibbs looked at Tim. "Mold?"

Tim nodded quickly. "Looked like it. The lab will tell us for sure."

"Abby will," Gibbs said. Fornell tilted his head, and Gibbs locked eyes with him. "She's the best forensic scientist in D.C., Tobias, and you know it. Besides, she already knows what she's looking for."

"You think she can handle it? With DiNozzo being the …"

"She's stronger than you give her credit for," Tim put in. "And she'll be really mad if you don't send it to her. Really, really mad."

Fornell nodded. "Okay, so the interview …"

"Did you find the gag?" Gibbs asked suddenly. He wasn't trying to postpone the questions, not really. At least, that's what he told himself. "Because I threw it, but I don't know where it ended up."

"We found it," Fornell said.

"I stepped in the blood." 

_'Focus on the details. Don't look at the bigger picture.'_

"I left my shoes in the bag with my clothes."

"We've got them."

"Ducky cut the rope with my knife." He patted himself down quickly, ashamed that he had no conscious memory of where it had gone. "I don't have it. I must have left it in my pocket."

"We've got it, Gibbs," Fornell insisted.

"They got everything, Boss," Tim added. "I promise."

"Everything but the witness statements."

He took a deep breath and crossed his arms. Why was he trying so hard to put this off? If they were going to catch DelMar, they needed every piece of evidence they could get. What he'd seen was an important part of that, and he knew it. What the hell was wrong with him?

"Okay," he finally said. 

_'You can do this, Gunny.'_

He cleared his throat and wiped at the sweat he felt starting to form on his forehead. "Let's go."

"Okay. So when did you know that someone was in your house?" It was a good first question, easy to answer.

"When I turned the corner and DiNozzo's car was there. Oh, did you …?"

"It's on a truck, and it'll be on its way to your evidence garage within the hour," Fornell said. "Can we stay on focus here, Gibbs?"

_'Suck it up, Marine. You're not the one who's hurt. You can do this.'_

He closed his eyes and made himself go back there. Made himself think of all the things he'd been trying to forget. He could see it all, everything, against the backs of his eyelids. Every detail, just as it had been – the crooked door, the dark house, the sound of running feet, the bloody footprints, the open basement door, the blood, the rope, and DiNozzo … DiNozzo …

_'Tony …'_

"I can't do this," he whispered. No one was more surprised by the words than he was, but once he'd said them, he didn't want to take them back. "Not right now, Tobias. I can't." He pushed away from the window and crossed the room. "At least wait until he's out of surgery. At least wait until we know …"

"No." Fornell jumped up and put himself between Gibbs and the door. "I need to know what you saw. And I know it sucks, but we do this to people every day. Are you telling me you're a worse witness than they are?"

"I'm telling you that I can't do this right now." He forced the words out through clenched teeth. He needed some time to catch his breath; that was all. Why was it so hard to just breathe?

"I could do what you did to Jack Kale. Remember that, Gibbs? You need me to remind you that he was tortured with your …?"

"Don't." There was a threat there, even if he didn't know what he'd do if Fornell kept going. Yes, he remembered what he'd done to Jack Kale, and he already hated himself for doing it. It had never occurred to him what his words would do to an innocent man, the pain they would cause to a victim's friend, until he realized that those same words could be used against him.

"Do you want me to catch this guy or not?"

"Of course I do!"

"Then talk to me." Fornell's voice was sympathetic but insistent. "Tell me what you saw when you walked down the stairs."

"You know what I saw."

"No, Boss, we don't," Tim said softly. He stood and walked toward them. "We can imagine what you saw. We can guess what you saw. But we don't know, and we really need to."

"Look, if you can't describe it, then draw it." Fornell held his notepad and pencil out. "You know that basement better than anyone. You know the measurements, and you know how to sketch a crime scene. Draw it for me."

"I'm not sketching anything." Gibbs pushed the notepad away from him. "I'm not drawing him like that."

"Like what?" Fornell asked. "Where was he? Where was DiNozzo when you came down those stairs?"

"He was …" He wanted to answer them; he did. He just couldn't get the words past his lips. He shook his head and turned away again, rubbing at the sudden ache in his chest.

"Gibbs." It was Tim this time, stepping around him, cutting off his escape. "He'd want you to do this, and you know he would. Until he wakes up again …"

_'If he wakes up again.'_

"You're the best chance we've got of catching this son of a bitch, but you have to talk to us. You have to tell us what you saw."

"They crucified him!" 

The words exploded from his mouth, and the horror of them spread through him. That was what he'd been trying to avoid doing, and damn them for making him. He stepped toward Tim in anger, and to his credit, Tim didn't back away. 

But the dam had finally broken. All of the emotions he'd tried so hard not to feel, all of the images that he'd tried so hard to block out of his mind, they were all pouring out of him faster and with more violence than he'd expected. There was no going back now, no pushing them away again. He couldn't deny the truth about any of it, not anymore, and he couldn't stop it.

"Is that what you want to hear, McGee?" he demanded. "I thought he was dead! I was supposed to have his six, I always say I do, but I didn't. And he was hanging there, covered in blood, and I swear to God I didn't think he was breathing. They tortured him, cut him up and left him there, and when I got there – when I _finally_ got there – I was worried about contaminating the damn crime scene! I froze up, and I just stood there. If it hadn't been for Ducky, I'd still be standing there! Is that what you needed to know?"

He saw the tears in Tim's eyes, and he knew that he was hurting him again, but even that wasn't enough to stop him.

"I screwed up, and I almost let him die!"

His vision flashed red and then white, his knees buckled, and he stumbled. Someone grabbed his arms and helped him sit down. Something was squeezing his chest, and he couldn't breathe. Something was wrong with his heart – it was beating too fast and it hurt. Someone pushed his head down, and someone yelled for Ducky, but he didn't care. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered.

He'd left Tony behind. He'd given him up for dead. 

And he might have to do it again.


	5. Chapter 5

* * *

"I think he's coming around, Ducky."

He was lying down, but he didn't remember how he got there. 

"You see, Abigail? I told you it wouldn't take long."

He was warm and comfortable. His feet were propped up on something soft, and there was a soothing rhythm being rubbed on his leg.

"Is he waking up, Ducky? Timmy? Is he okay?"

He didn't hurt anywhere, he could breathe, and his chest didn't ache. His only complaints were a mild headache and something pinching the back of his hand.

"That's half the bag gone, Dr. Mallard."

He remembered yelling at Tim and feeling lightheaded, but that was all. What the hell happened?

"Jethro?"

_'You flipped out, Marine. Then you passed out.'_

Memories filtered in, one-by-one, but in reverse. Yelling at Tim, being mad at Fornell, talking to Ducky, being at the hospital, being at his house, the basement, Tony …

"Tony."

His eyes shot open, and he tried to sit up, but a firm but gentle hand on his chest stopped him and pushed him back down.

"Easy, Jethro. Just relax. Anthony is still with us, and is likely to remain so for quite some time to come."

"What?" His voice cracked like it hadn't been used in days. "How …?"

"The nurse who assisted me with your IV was kind enough to check on his status for us. They've moved him into the recovery room. His surgeon will be by to fill you in on the details as soon as possible."

"IV?" 

He looked down, found the small catheter taped to the back of his hand, and followed the tube with his eyes until he saw the clear bag hanging from the pole above his head. He wanted to know what they were giving him, but he couldn't have read such small print even if it had been right-side-up. He frowned.

"It's just saline, Agent Gibbs," Palmer explained quickly.

He was missing an important piece of information, and he had the distinct impression that everyone else in the room already had it. That wasn't a feeling he liked, and he took a moment to get his bearings. 

He was lying on one of the couches in the waiting room, and someone had covered him with a scratchy but warm blanket. Abby sat cross-legged at the other end of the couch; the soft object beneath his lower legs was her pajama-clad lap. Ducky was sitting in a chair a few feet in front of the couch with McGee standing behind him, and Palmer was standing next to the couch, near the wall. Fornell sat across the room, close enough to hear what was being said but far enough away to not be part of it. 

Abby shifted slightly and the soothing rhythm on his leg turned into a smack. 

"You scared me, Gibbs!"

"Abigail."

"Well he did!" 

She had a pouty expression, but one look at her eyes told him she didn't really mean it. She was upset, worried, stressed, and - as she'd said - scared. She wanted him to apologize to her for all of those things, and most likely to McGee, too, for yelling at him the way he had. But hurt feelings or no, Abby and McGee were fine. He had all the time in the world to make it up to them. There was only one person he felt the need to apologize to.

"Tony?" he said again.

"It was not his fault. If it's anyone's, I suppose it's mine." 

He didn't know if Ducky hadn't heard him or if he'd ignored him, but if he was a betting man, he'd have put money on the latter. "Tell me what …"

"I was so concerned about Anthony that I'm afraid I overlooked what was right in front of me. I mistook your symptoms for a fit of pique rather than seeing them for what they truly were."

He was getting angry that no one was answering him, and he had more important things to worry about than whatever Ducky thought was wrong with him.

"What about DiNozzo?"

"Confusion, anxiousness, agitation." Ducky continued on as though Gibbs weren't glaring daggers at him. "Timothy tells me you were sweating and hyperventilating. I'm guessing that you were having chest pains, too, weren't you?" He didn't acknowledge the question, but he didn't have to. Ducky obviously knew the answer anyway. "Your heart was beating far too fast, your breathing was far too shallow, and your blood pressure was far too low."

"Damn it, Duck," he said through clenched teeth. "I don't care."

Ducky's expression hardened slightly, as did his tone of voice. "Well, you should care. I'm trying to tell you that you're in shock, Jethro, and you have been for quite some time. Most probably from the first moment you walked down the stairs. Looking back on it now, I'm amazed that you stayed on your feet as long as you did."

He shook his head. "It was Tony who …"

"Anthony was in hypovolemic shock from the blood loss. The proper term for what you are suffering from is acute stress reaction. It is a psychological shock, and in some instances, if not managed correctly, it can progress into a physical condition. In your case, it did. Your blood pressure dropped, suddenly and drastically, and you passed out. It is not at all uncommon in witnesses to a violent trauma."

He opened his mouth to argue, but Ducky shook his head.

"It is also not a sign of weakness, so none of that nonsense. It just means that you're human."

Gibbs closed his eyes and sighed deeply. He wasn't in the mood for one of Ducky's lectures. He just wanted to get off the couch and find out how Tony was.

"I already told you that he's alive and he's going to recover, Jethro. At the moment, that is all that any of us know." Ducky's voice had softened again. Gibbs opened his eyes to see the older man smiling at him sadly. "You can sit up now, if you want. Just move slowly."

He pulled his feet out of Abby's lap carefully, put them on the floor, and sat up in one smooth movement. He looked down at the back of his left hand, then up at the IV bag above him, and reached for the tape.

"That stays until the drip is finished. Non-negotiable."

"Duck …" It wasn't his usual growl, but it was close.

"I'm glad to see you're feeling better," Ducky said with a small grin. "Those fluids are bringing your blood pressure back up, which is a good thing. Twenty minutes ago it was so low that the hospital staff wanted to admit you. I intervened on your behalf, but it was dependent upon your cooperation. Consider yourself fortunate that you're getting an IV in the waiting room rather than lying in a hospital bed of your own."

Gibbs sighed and leaned back against the couch. Silence had fallen over the waiting room, and it wasn't comfortable. It felt like everyone was on edge, waiting to see if he was going to explode again, and he couldn't really blame them. He'd been failing them all from the moment he'd found DiNozzo in his basement, and it was time to stop. 

He couldn't do anything to help Tony, but he could help the rest of them. 

He held his right arm out to Abby and cocked his head at her. She scooted over silently and curled against him, and he wrapped his hand around her shoulder. "I'm okay, Abs," he said softly before he pressed a kiss against the top of her head. "And Tony's going to be fine."

* * *

The next twenty minutes passed largely in silence. There were a few half-hearted attempts at conversation, the majority of them by Abby with a few from McGee and Palmer, but none of them lasted long. The combination of worry and the fact that it was nearly 2am didn't leave any of them in the mood to talk much, not even Ducky. 

Gibbs had made an effort to finish his interview, but both Fornell and McGee assured him that they had enough to start with and they could do it later that day. The part of him that wanted the investigation to move forward as quickly as possible chafed against waiting, but the rest of him was grateful for the respite, however brief it might be. He didn't think he'd lose it or pass out again, but he was honest enough to admit, at least to himself, that he still wasn't ready to go through it all again.

The IV had run empty, and Ducky had removed it. The fluids had the desired effect, and with his blood pressure back up, he was more clear-headed than he had been all night. He could look back on the way he'd acted and the things he'd said, and though he was ashamed of himself, knowing that he'd been in shock at the time made it easier to deal with. He still had a whole lot of things to make up to a whole lot of people, but he could view those things rationally. He would apologize to Abby for scaring her, and he would apologize to McGee, both for checking out on him at the house and for screaming at him, but those would be done later and privately.

Then there was Tony. 

It was impossible to be objective about one of his team – one of his kids – being tortured in his basement. There was no way it could have been random, neither the attack itself nor the location. That meant that both Tony and his house had been chosen for a specific reason. 

_'Because it was about you,'_ his mind told him. _'They went after him because of you.'_

It was the same thing he'd been telling himself all night. It was the only conclusion that had made sense when he was in shock, and it was still the only one that made sense when he wasn't. The one thing that had changed was that he wasn't saying it out loud anymore. 

"Leroy Jethro Gibbs?"

None of them had seen her walk into the room, but the second she announced herself, all of them were on their feet, even Fornell. Gibbs took three steps forward and nodded at her.

"I'm Dr. Marquardt. I'm Mr. DiNozzo's surgeon." She held her hand out, and Gibbs shook it.

"Agent," he said. "Agent DiNozzo."

"My apologies," she said. She smiled at him, but he didn't return it. She caught onto his mood rather quickly and dropped any other pleasantries. He was grateful for that. "Was Agent DiNozzo injured in the line of duty, then?"

"We're not sure yet."

He glanced at McGee and Fornell, and they both shrugged at him. Even though they were fairly certain they knew who had attacked Tony, and he was sure he knew why, they still had no idea how or where they'd grabbed him in the first place. Had he run into DelMar somewhere and things had escalated? Had DelMar been waiting at his apartment and ambushed him? Or was it something else entirely? Was it tied to the Brewer and Strauss investigation, to Gibbs confronting Azari in front of DelMar, or was it just a coincidence that DelMar had decided to go after Tony again? Those questions were pertinent to Fornell's investigation, but not to the doctor's treatment plan.

"How is he?"

She smiled at him again, but seemed reluctant to answer. She glanced around the room, making eye contact with all of the occupants, and he understood where her hesitance was coming from. Fornell picked up on it at the same time, and he stepped forward.

"Agent Tobias Fornell," he said. "FBI." He motioned at McGee, then at the others. "This is NCIS Agent Timothy McGee. Dr. Donald Mallard, our Medical Examiner, his assistant Palmer, and Ms. Sciuto, our forensic scientist."

Gibbs let Fornell make the introductions, though he bristled slightly at hearing Fornell make any claim on his team. He took a deep breath and reminded himself that for the duration of the investigation, they were Fornell's. It had to be that way.

That didn't mean he had to like it.

"We're all working the investigation into the assault on Agent DiNozzo, so whatever you say to Agent Gibbs, you're going to have to repeat to me anyway. You can save yourself some trouble if you tell us all now."

She turned back to Gibbs for confirmation, and he gave it. "It's all right," he said. "Just tell us how he is."

She nodded once, and the smile returned to her face. "I have every reason to believe that he's going to be just fine," she said. "We've upgraded his condition from Critical to Serious, and if all goes the way it should, we expect to upgrade him again, to Good, within the next six to ten hours."

The collective sigh of relief filled the room, and Gibbs closed his eyes and sent up a silent prayer of thanks.

"He's all right?" Abby was the first to find her voice, and he wasn't surprised. "He's really okay?"

"He's still a long way from okay," Dr. Marquardt said carefully. "But he's much better than he was when he arrived. Another fifteen minutes to half an hour, and this would be an entirely different conversation." 

Abby gasped loudly; McGee and Palmer were only a bit quieter. They'd all known it was close, but hearing just how close was a shock. 

They'd been minutes from losing him. 

Gibbs couldn't stop his mind from running through all the ways things could have been different. If Ducky had taken a few minutes longer to get ready to leave, if he and McGee hadn't wrapped up for the night when they did, if he'd stopped for gas, if he'd hit more red lights on his way home, if he'd chased the people who'd run out his back door instead of going downstairs …

"We moved him to the OR and got him stabilized very quickly. The only immediate threat to his life was the blood loss. Once that was controlled, and once we began replacing what he had lost and was still losing, his condition began reversing itself."

From there, Dr. Marquardt filled them in on every detail of Tony's injuries, what they implied about the torture he'd been subjected to and what they meant for his future. 

He'd lost between two and two-and-a-half liters of blood before he arrived at the hospital, and more in the operating room, but they'd started replacing it as soon as he was in the ambulance. He'd been strangled. He'd been drugged. He'd been beaten, most likely with a blunt instrument rather than fists, which made Gibbs think about the hammer that had been lying on floor near Tony's feet and the two-by-fours, which had been stacked neatly against the wall when he'd left for work, that had been scattered around him. He'd taken two blows to the head, one on his forehead and the other behind his left ear, which left him with a Grade Three concussion. He had bruising consistent with having fallen or been thrown down a flight of stairs. 

He'd managed to escape without a single broken bone, and though his left kidney was bruised, he had no major organ damage or internal bleeding. The screwdriver in his leg had missed all of the arteries and major blood vessels, and it hadn't hit the bone, either. Removing it had been simple, and though he'd favor his left leg and probably limp for a while, he'd gotten lucky. 

He had two sets of rope marks around his wrists, one deeper than the other, which implied that at some point, after he was too weak to struggle much, he'd been cut down and moved. He'd likely spent most of the time hanging from the rafters with his hands straight above his head. The muscles in his back, neck, shoulders, chest, and arms were stretched and strained, but none of them had torn. There was a possibility of nerve damage. When they'd moved him into the crucifixion position, they'd dislocated his left shoulder. 

His blood pressure had been dangerously low – 50/33 when the paramedics took it – but it was climbing. His blood volume was still too low, and what blood he did have wasn't carrying enough oxygen. Being hung by his wrists had kept him from exhaling completely, and the combination of his dislocated shoulder, bruised ribs, and muscle damage in his chest had made it difficult for him to breathe at all. His already-scarred and damaged lungs were compromised. He was in danger of developing pneumonia. His trachea was swollen from being strangled. He was still sedated. They'd left him on the vent after surgery.

They'd documented every injury they found, measured the depth and length of every slice on his chest and arms, and taken pictures of everything. 

Gibbs looked at the pictures before passing them over to Ducky, who was standing – silent – behind Palmer, who'd fallen into a chair and buried his head in his hands about halfway through the briefing. McGee stood close to Gibbs' right shoulder, with his arms around Abby, who'd spent the last several minutes with her face hidden against his chest. Fornell stood just to Gibbs' left.

"Agent Gibbs?" 

He raised his head and looked at Dr. Marquardt. She was trying to smile at him again, but it was tight and strained. He almost appreciated the effort.

"There's something I need to speak with you about privately. If you could step into the hallway with me, please?"

He followed her through the door without a word. Whatever she needed to tell him, she was speaking to him in his role as the agent of Tony's medical power of attorney rather than as his boss, his friend, or someone involved in the investigation. An injury that she didn't want to speak about openly without his permission? The possibilities were endless, and his mind swirled with them.

"What?" he said once they were far enough away from the door that they couldn't be overheard. "What happened?"

She turned slowly, and though she'd had no problem looking directly at him in the waiting room, she suddenly seemed reluctant to meet his eyes. She took a deep breath and looked down at the floor.

"What?" he demanded.

"Agent Gibbs, did you know about the wounds on Agent DiNozzo's back?"

He glanced down at his fingernails, at the flecks of blood that still showed underneath them, then back up at her. "I knew he had some, yes," he said. "But I didn't see them, if that's what you're asking. Why?"

She looked down again, but it was at something in her hand rather than the floor. It was another photograph, like the ones he'd just handed to Ducky.

"We saved his back for last," she began. "The wounds there were shallower than the ones on his chest, there didn't seem to be as many, and they weren't bleeding as badly. Plus, since he was on his back, there was already pressure on them. It wasn't until we turned him over and began suturing them that we saw what they were."

"What were they?"

She didn't speak again, but handed the photograph to him in silence.

When he looked at it, his heart froze in his chest. He felt bile rising into his throat, and he was getting dizzy again. Lights were flashing behind his eyes, and he took a deep, shaky breath. 

_'About you.'_ His mind echoed the same thought it had from the very beginning. _'It's because of you.'_

"Agent Gibbs?" There was sincere concern in her voice, and it was for him, not for Tony. "Are you all right?"

He nodded wordlessly without taking his eyes from the photograph in his hand. 

"Are you sure?"

"Fine," he whispered. "I'm fine. Thank you." He took another breath and looked back up at her. "When can I see him?" 

"I assume that you'll be acting as his Designated Contact Person?" 

He nodded once more. 

She smiled, though not as sadly as before. "He's in the ICU on the fifth floor. I've already spoken to the Director of Critical Care, and she agrees that this is a special enough situation to warrant waiving the rules about visiting hours. You've got her permission to go see him immediately, and to stay with him as long as you wish. I'm afraid that's only for you, though. The rest of your friends will have to go home." 

He glanced across his shoulder toward the door. He knew where they were all going to go, and he knew it wouldn't be home. 

"Just be aware that he's sedated, and he's going to stay that way until morning, at the earliest. We'll re-evaluate his lungs and breathing then and decide whether or not to remove him from the vent." 

"I know," he said. "That's not the point anyway." 

"I didn't really think it was." She held out her hand, and he shook it again. "I'll see you upstairs, Agent Gibbs." 

He looked back down at the picture in his hand one last time as she walked away, took a deep breath, and walked back into the waiting room. 

"Gibbs?" McGee and Abby jumped up from the chairs they'd been sitting in, and Ducky stepped toward him. 

"What is it, Jethro?" Ducky asked. "What's happened?" 

"Duck, you take Palmer and get back to autopsy. Fornell will get the tools they collected to you. I know you can't do much working from photographs and measurements, but get whatever you can. I want to know which tools caused which injuries, in as much detail as possible. And get me a profile on Stefano DelMar. I want to know what makes this guy tick so I can figure out how to detonate him." 

"Of course, Jethro, but …" 

"Abby, you've got a ton of evidence being delivered to your lab – blood samples, fingerprints, and the rope just for starters. Tony's car is coming into the garage on the back of a flatbed. I don't have to tell you that this is your highest priority case, do I?" 

"No." 

"I didn't think so. Don't worry about Vance; I'll take care of him. Everything else you're doing, every other case you're working, stops until this is done. If these guys left so much as an eyelash behind, I want you to find it." 

"Absolutely, Bossman." 

"McGee, you're with Fornell, but I want you to focus on figuring out how they got him. DelMar grabbed him from somewhere, and I want to know where and when. I want to know how long they had him." 

"On it, Boss." 

"I heard two people run out, and there were two sets of shoe prints. Fornell, you know Azari's organization better than any of us. Figure out who's loyal enough to DelMar to help him torture and try to murder a federal agent." 

Fornell stepped forward and cocked his head to the side. "I thought this was my case, Gibbs." 

"Oh, it is your case," Gibbs said. "I'm just making sure you do it right." 

"Now, Jethro …" 

Gibbs turned back to McGee and put his hand on his shoulder. "I cannot be part of this. You are my eyes and ears, McGee. Do you understand?" McGee nodded solemnly and silently. "This has to be done right, and it has to be done now. I need you to do this. Tony needs you to do this. You got me?" 

"I got ya, Boss." 

Gibbs turned the photograph upside down and slid it into Tim's hand, then squeezed his arm. "This is personal, Tim," he whispered. "It's personal." 

Gibbs turned and walked out the door without another word. He knew the second that McGee turned the photograph over and looked at it, because he heard the "Shit!" all the way down the hallway. He kept walking, and he didn't look back. He couldn’t look back. He couldn't see their faces, and he couldn't look at that photograph again, even though he was never going to get the image out of his mind. 

The wounds on Tony's back weren't simple slashes like the ones on his chest and arms. They were deliberate, straight and even, shallow enough to leave the skin in place but deep enough to bleed and leave scars. They crossed his upper back, between his shoulder blades, and they were letters. Letters had been carved into his skin.

Five letters. 

One word. 

GIBBS


	6. Chapter 6

* * *

"DiNozzo, you look like hell."

Tony couldn't hear him, and wouldn't have been able to even if he hadn't been sedated. Gibbs had arrived just as Dr. Marquardt had starting checking his vitals and running another series of chest x-rays, so he hadn't been allowed to go in yet. He was standing in the hallway, drinking a cup of the black swill that passed for coffee in the waiting room, and looking in through the window, waiting for the nurse to come out and get him. They'd just wheeled the x-ray machine away from Tony's bed, and he was willing to give them a few more minutes to make sure everything was okay. As long as the curtain was open and he could see Tony, he'd be fine.

Under normal circumstances, he might have felt a bit ridiculous talking to himself. But circumstances weren't normal. Even by the MCRT's normal standards of bad luck, the current situation was FUBAR. And besides, DiNozzo really did look like hell.

The thick plastic mouthpiece held the breathing tube in place as it passed between his lips and down his throat, and a large machine next to him pumped oxygen into his lungs. Another clear tube, this one filled with blood, disappeared under a swath of bandage and tape high on his right collarbone. The small white monitor on his finger checked the oxygen in his blood, and the cuff around his upper right arm took his blood pressure every five minutes. There was an IV in the back of his right hand, and he had a bag of saline just like Gibbs' hanging above him, though his had antibiotics, Versed, and morphine mixed in. He was going to hate that morphine when he woke up, but he was going to need it, too. The muscle damage alone would cause enough pain to warrant narcotics, and if he tried to move his arms, it would be a hundred times worse.

His left shoulder was bare, his upper arm was strapped to his side, and his left hand was strapped down across his stomach. Both of his wrists were bandaged almost halfway to his elbow. The dark red mark on his throat had turned several shades darker, and the gash above his right eye was swollen. Where the gown was pulled back and didn't cover his chest, the electrodes for the EKG and the sutured cuts were visible. His skin, in the few places not mottled and marred by dark purple and red bruises or covered by bandages, was too pale for Gibbs' liking, but at least he wasn't that sickly shade of bluish-grey anymore.

"Absolute hell."

He didn't know if he was talking about DiNozzo's appearance, or the whole damn situation, but it didn't really matter. He'd leave it up to the person who'd heard him say it to decide what he meant.

"Timothy showed me the photograph of Anthony's back."

"Yeah." He didn't turn away from the window, didn't take his eyes off the steady rise and fall of Tony's chest. He just took another sip of his coffee. "I figured he would."

"Jethro …"

"Don't." He heard Ducky's footsteps as the older man walked up beside him, but he didn't turn toward him. "Don't try to convince me this isn't my fault, Duck. I won't believe you."

Ducky stopped at his side and joined him in watching Tony through the ICU window. "There is no doubt that you're involved," Ducky said softly. "The people who did this have made that abundantly clear. But you have no idea how you're involved, do you? And even if you did, that still wouldn't make it your fault."

Gibbs turned away from the window just long enough to shoot a sidelong, incredulous look in Ducky's direction. Ducky kept his eyes on Tony.

"Tell me, Jethro. Were you the target, or were you the weapon?"

"What?"

"It's a simple enough question." Again, Ducky didn't look at him. "You feel that what's been done to Tony was a message to you, right?"

Gibbs ground his teeth together, turned, and pointed at Tony's bed through the window. "They carved my name into his back!" Ducky nodded silently. "My name. In my house. In my basement. With my tools. What else could that mean?"

"To whom?"

Gibbs dropped his arm and tilted his head. "What?"

"You are upset and hurting and feeling guilty because of what those things mean to you. But have you stopped to think what they mean to him?" 

The nurse was moving around the side of DiNozzo's bed again, looking at the numbers on the monitor above his head and writing them down in his chart. 

"Your house, Jethro," Ducky continued. "Your basement, your tools, your name. What do those things mean to your team? To Tony?"

Gibbs closed his eyes and let his head fall forward. Ducky was right; he hadn't thought about that.

"Safety," he whispered.

"As we both know full well, one of the first things any torturer will seek to do is to isolate his victim, to make him feel alone, to eliminate all feelings of hope and safety." Ducky finally moved, and he turned his whole body toward Gibbs. "So I ask again. Were you the target or the weapon? Did they use him to hurt you, or did they use you to hurt him?"

He shook his head without opening his eyes. "I don’t know."

"Were they trying to take him away from you, or were they trying to take you away from him?"

He lifted his head slowly, opened his eyes, and looked back at Tony, so still and pale and bruised, surrounded by wires and tubes and monitors. He'd fought so hard to make it that far, and he had so much farther to go, so much to overcome, so many battles left to fight, all of it just to survive. And that was just his physical condition. How would he be mentally? Emotionally?

"Does it really matter, Duck?"

"Yes, it does," Ducky insisted. "It matters to the people who did this. It will matter to Anthony, and it should matter to you."

"Why?"

"Because if it is the first, then they have failed. If it is the second, then you cannot allow them to succeed."

Gibbs huffed out a breath. "I'm right here."

"A good start, but simply your presence will not be enough." Ducky stepped closer, until he was only inches away. Gibbs kept his eyes straight ahead. "You know that boy better than any of us do, Jethro. It's quite probable that you know him better than anyone on the planet. You know what he needs."

Dr. Marquardt was back in the ICU, looking at the same numbers on the monitor that the nurse had just written down. She didn't look happy.

"He needs you. The you that he depends on, the you that never wavers, the you that means safety, in all of your stubborn, pig-headed, obsessed bastard glory. And if you can't be that, if you can't give that to him, then they've already won."

Gibbs straightened his shoulders and turned his head toward Ducky. "They haven't," he vowed through clenched teeth. "And they won't."

"See to it that they don't."

Gibbs took a sip of his coffee and glanced through the window once more. He wished he knew what was going on in there, but he trusted that if it was serious, Dr. Marquardt would tell him. "Are you going back to the Yard?"

"I am." Ducky turned his back to the window and faced the elevator he'd ridden up on. "Mr. Palmer and Abigail are waiting for me downstairs. There is much work to be done, after all."

"McGee?"

"He and Agent Fornell have already left. Timothy was going directly to the office, and Fornell said something about stopping by the Hoover Building to get some evidence sent to Abby, but he did tell Timothy that he would be to the Yard shortly."

"Good. That's good."

The elevator dinged, and behind him, Gibbs heard the doors opening. "Hold the elevator, please," Ducky said. He started moving toward it, but he stopped long enough to put his hand on Gibbs' shoulder. "We will do our jobs, Jethro." He tilted his head in Tony's direction before walking away. "You do yours."

"Will do, Duck." He didn't know if Ducky had heard him or not, but it didn't matter. It was as much a vow to himself, and to Tony, as it was to anyone. "Will do."

The activity on the other side of the ICU window was starting to pick up, and it was all concentrated around Tony's bed. Dr. Marquardt was already there with one nurse, and two more hurried to her side when she beckoned them over. He couldn't see what they were doing, but they looked a bit frantic. Dr. Marquardt looked worried, and that was more than enough to scare him. He took a step toward the window and raised his hand to the glass.

Dr. Marquardt looked up at him, flashed one of her quick, tight smiles, and raised her finger to indicate that she'd be out in a minute. He didn't move away from the window until she stepped away from Tony's bed, but when she walked through the door, he was standing on the other side of it, waiting for her.

"What is it, Doc?" he asked before the door had even closed behind her. "What's wrong?"

"It's all right now." Her voice was calm, as was the expression on her face. He knew it was meant to reassure him, but it wasn't working. "Agent DiNozzo was starting to exhibit some symptoms of TACO …"

"Taco?"

The smiled that earned him was one of amusement. "Yes, I know. It's a silly acronym. T-A-C-O. It stands for transfusion-associated circulatory overload."

"What's that?"

"Patients who receive rapid blood transfusions, as Agent DiNozzo has, are at risk for a number of complications. These are well-documented and not uncommon, and we watch patients very carefully to ensure that if they do start to develop symptoms, they are caught early."

"He was fine," Gibbs said. "You told me he was fine. You just needed to do a chest x-ray"

"Yes. But when I reviewed that x-ray, I saw signs of the early stages of congestive heart failure."

"What?!"

She held her hands up, and then gestured toward the couch across the hall from Tony's window. "Why don't we sit down?"

"No," he said. "I'm fine. Tell me what's wrong with Tony."

She put her hands on her hips and locked eyes with him. "I am fully aware of what happened in the waiting room downstairs, Agent Gibbs. I know that my patient isn't the only one having trouble keeping his blood pressure up right now. You will not be doing Tony any good if you pass out again, because this time, you will be admitted and you won't be allowed to stay with him. Now, please, sit down and let me explain."

Gibbs took a deep breath and blew it out. She was right, and he knew it. He sat down on the couch and leaned forward, with his elbows on his knees, holding his coffee with both hands. She settled on the arm at the opposite end.

"Congestive heart failure is a scary term for something that, in Agent DiNozzo's case, is relatively minor."

"It's fluid around his heart," he said. She tilted her head, and he shrugged. "I've seen a lot of dead bodies in my time, Doc. Not all of them were murdered, and a whole lot of them had heart problems. I know what it is."

"Do you also know that in its early stages, it's usually easily treatable?"

He nodded his head silently.

"It's a small amount of fluid, and we did catch it early. We raised the head of his bed to encourage it to drain away from his heart, we added a diuretic to his IV to help, and I'm going to repeat the chest x-ray every half hour until I'm satisfied that it's going away. I'm going to stay on top of this, Agent Gibbs. He's come too far on his own for me to let something like this take him out."

Gibbs took a drink of his coffee as he watched the nurses that still hovered around Tony's bedside. 

"Because it's the rapid infusion of blood and fluids that is causing the problem, we've temporarily suspended the blood transfusion. We've maintained his other IVs, because we cannot and will not discontinue the antibiotics, the Versed or the morphine, but we've slowed them down. Once his body acclimates to its current condition, we'll resume transfusing, but we'll do so at a much slower rate. Because he's on the vent, we don't have to worry about any pulmonary complications or a further drop in his oxygen saturation levels. We've already got those under control."

"Is that all?"

"I wasn't happy with his last blood pressure reading, either. Again, it's a symptom of TACO, and I was expecting it to happen."

"Still too low?"

"No. The opposite, actually. It's jumped rather significantly in the past few minutes."

He looked at her in confusion. "I thought we wanted it to go up."

"We do, but not that far and not that fast. As I said, we were aware it might happen, and we caught it early. Right now, we're adjusting his medications and seeing if it will level off and even out on its own. If it doesn't, we may need to do a therapeutic phlebotomy to get it back down." 

"You might have to take blood out of someone you’ve just spent the last three hours putting blood back into?" She shrugged, and he sighed. "Only DiNozzo could manage that one."

That made her laugh, and for the first time, he saw her as more than a doctor. She was young, in her mid-30s at the most, with short brown hair and green eyes. She was a real person, one that he was going to be seeing a lot of in the next few days, and it would make things easier on him and DiNozzo both if he treated her like one. Besides, she was the reason Tony was still alive, and the reason he would stay that way. He owed her more than basic respect; he owed her more than he could ever repay.

"What's it all mean, Doc?"

"It may not seem like it right now, but it means that he's getting better," she answered. "His body is trying to fix itself. It's just going too far in the opposite direction. It also means that it's going to be a few more minutes before you can go in and see him." She pushed herself to her feet and looked back down at him. "I'm going to run another chest x-ray, but as soon as it's done, I'll come back out and get you myself, all right?"

He leaned back, crossed his leg over his knee, and put his arm across the back of the couch. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Of that, Agent Gibbs," Dr. Marquardt said as she pushed the button to open the heavy glass door, "I have never had any doubt."

* * *

Gibbs was still sitting on the couch waiting for Dr. Marquardt to come back when the next person got off the elevator and walked toward the window over Tony's bed. He looked familiar, but Gibbs couldn't think of how he knew him. He was on the tall side, big and broad, and he was wearing a dark suit that marked him as some sort of federal officer.

"Damn," the man muttered. "He's still alive?"

Gibbs cleared his throat, and the man turned toward him. "Excuse me?" he said as he stood.

"Agent Gibbs." He was surprised, and it showed clearly on his face. "I just meant that I, I mean, with everything that's happened, I'm just … I'm surprised he made it through. I guess he's stronger than I gave him credit for."

Gibbs walked across the hallway and came to a stop a few inches from the newcomer. "DiNozzo's stronger than most people think he is," he said. "Now, who are you?" 

"Rivers, Bruce Rivers." The name sounded familiar, too, but he still couldn't place the man. "You broke my nose last week."

Then he recognized him. "Right." He thought Rivers might have been fishing for an apology for the nose thing, but if he was, he was going to be sorely disappointed, because he wasn't getting one. "You're Fornell's guy."

"Yeah." Rivers didn't look too enthusiastic about that, but he nodded anyway. "Fornell's guy."

"So, Agent Rivers, what are you doing here?"

"Um …" He glanced over his shoulder nervously, and then looked down at the floor. "Overnight protection detail. The hospital's handling the security, but we thought that overnight should have some more. Just in case."

"Ah." Gibbs' lips twitched. "You're the babysitter."

"Yeah." Rivers smiled, an expression that struck Gibbs as completely out-of-place on his face. "I drew the short straw."

Gibbs' glare shut the attempt at humor down quickly, and when he stepped forward, Rivers backed up.

"As I recall, Rivers," he said, with a sarcastic emphasis on the name, "the last guy you babysat knocked you out cold, stole your weapon, stole your car, crashed through my gates, and murdered someone with your gun."

Rivers dropped his head again. "Yes, sir."

"Don't call me 'sir.'" It was an automatic response, one that he'd been giving for so many years that he didn't even have to think about it.

On the other side of the ICU window, Gibbs saw Dr. Marquardt moving away from Tony's bed and toward the door, and this time she had a smile on her face.

"Here's how this is going to work. I'm going to be in there with DiNozzo." He pointed at Tony's still form, and Rivers followed with his eyes. "You're going to be out here, watching that elevator …" He pointed again. "… and that door." And again. "No one comes onto this floor without permission, you got it?"

"Yes, sir," Rivers said quickly. "I mean, Agent Gibbs."

"I'll get a list of everyone who's authorized to go through that door, and you check it against everyone who tries."

The door opened from the inside, and Dr. Marquardt leaned out. "Agent Gibbs? You can come in now."

"Be right there, Doc," he said. He turned back to Rivers one last time. "And if anyone gets within ten feet of DiNozzo without my permission, I'll knock you over the head and steal your weapon, too." He leaned in close, so that only Rivers could hear what he said. "But I'll shoot you with it."

He turned his back and walked away. "How's he doing, Doc?" he asked Dr. Marquardt as he neared her.

"Better," she said. "A lot better. At this rate, he'll be off the vent and in his own room before breakfast."

He was almost smiling when he stepped through the door, but it only lasted until he saw DiNozzo across the room. He was already moving toward Tony's bed when the door slid closed behind him, leaving Agent Bruce Rivers alone in the hallway.

* * *

"Hey, Abby."

"Timmy!" Abby turned away from her computer and ran toward Tim as he walked into the room. He held his hands up, and she squealed in delight. "You brought me breakfast!"

He looked down at his hands and back up at her again. "I brought you Caf-Pow and a candy bar."

"Yep," she said as she took them from him. "Breakfast."

He shook his head as she walked away. Then he noticed the stacks of boxes against the walls, in some place three or four boxes high. Those hadn't been there an hour earlier. 

"You're busy," he said. "I'll come back later."

"Oh, no," she argued around the bite of candy in her mouth. "I'm not busy. I just got this really big delivery from the FBI." She swallowed, took a drink of her Caf-Pow, and smiled at him. "I hear you had something to do with it."

"Yeah, I did. Sort of. I guess." He walked forward, taking in the dozens of boxes as he did. "I had no idea there was this much, though. It didn't seem like this much when we were gathering it."

"Oh, this isn't from Gibbs' house." Abby walked over to one of the boxes and pulled the lid off. "This is twenty-five years worth of evidence. Everything they've ever had about Rick Azari and everyone who's ever worked for him."

Tim's eyes widened in surprise. "Really?" Abby put the lid back on the box she'd opened and he blinked at her. "What did this have to do with me? I couldn't access any of their files yesterday. I thought they had them all locked down because Jack Kale killed Azari with an FBI agent's gun."

"They did," Abby said. "But Fornell thought it would be a good idea to give it to us, because there might be something in these boxes that will tie Stefano DelMar to what happened to Tony." She grinned at him. "He was very thorough."

"Yeah?" He was still looking at the files, and he wasn't quite over his surprise that they were there. "I wonder why."

Abby's grin grew wider. "He said you scare him."

That took him by surprise. "Me?" he said. "I scare Fornell?"

"Yes, sir," Abby said with a nod. "His exact words were, 'When that kid is pissed, he's as scary as Gibbs has ever been.'"

"Huh." He couldn't help the grin that spread across his face as he looked around at the boxes of evidence and files one last time, and he shook his head. "Okay, so, are you going through all this right now?"

"No." Her voice lost all traces of good humor and cheerfulness as she gestured at the lab table and the much smaller pile of evidence bags on it. "I've started running the … the Tony stuff."

He walked over to her and pulled her into a hug. "He's going to be okay, Abby." He tightened his arms around her, and was rewarded by her doing the same to him. "You heard what the doctor said."

"I know," she answered softly. "But he's not okay right now, and I'm just … I want to see him, Timmy. I want him here where he belongs."

"Yeah. Me too." He'd never have admitted it to Tony, even though after everything that had happened, he probably should. Annoying though he may have been, Tony DiNozzo was the best partner anyone could ask for, and Tim hated the man who'd hurt him so badly. Just twelve hours earlier, he'd been teasing Tony about not being able to keep his mouth shut, and now, he'd have done anything just to hear his voice. 

He pulled away from Abby quickly when a thought occurred to him. "Hey, your machines are all running, right? There's nothing you need to be really doing right now?"

She nodded in response.

"I know a way you can see Tony, if that would make you feel better."

"How?"

"I was getting ready to watch the security footage from the parking lot. I was really just going to grab a timecode from it, so I can start building a timeline for figuring out when … yeah. But anyway, do you want to watch it with me? I could use the company, and it would almost be like Tony was here, right?"

"Yeah." Her smile was small at first, uncertain, but the more she thought about it, the bigger it got. "I think that's a great idea. He'd love that we were watching a movie with him in it, wouldn't he? I should make popcorn."

Tim laughed as he walked over to her computer, sat down, and loaded the security footage. "I don't think it's going to be quite that long, Abs."

She pulled her chair up next to his and sat down. "Maybe Tony's a really slow walker. Or maybe he dances to his car. Or does cartwheels. I mean, you never know, do you?"

They already knew that Tony had left the Squad Room around 8:00, so Tim jumped to 20:00 hours before he started scanning manually. The timecode said 20:09 when Tony first appeared on the edge of the frame, and Tim hit the play button. "That looks to me like he's walking." He turned his head slightly and smiled at her. "I never pegged Tony for a random dancer any …"

Abby screamed.

Tim snapped his head back to the computer screen just in time to see a large man throw a length of rope over Tony's head and pull back on it. He slammed his hand down on the pause button, stood up, grabbed Abby by the shoulders, and turned her away.

"Timmy!" Her voice was shaking as badly as the rest of her was, and he wrapped his arms around her tightly from behind. He wanted to hold her, but he couldn't let her watch any more than she'd already seen. 

He buried his face in her hair as he whispered in her ear. "He's okay, Abby. Just remember that. It's all over, and he's going to be fine."

"No, no, no. This isn't supposed to happen here. How'd they get here? They're not supposed to do that!"

"Abby, listen to me …"

"We're safe here," she insisted. "He was supposed to be safe here!"

"Calm down, Abby. Tony's safe now, remember? He's at the hospital, and Gibbs is with him, and everything's going to be …"

"But they took him from _here_! They stole him from _us_!"


	7. Chapter 7

* * *

"Agent Gibbs?"

He was starting to get sick of waking up without remembering falling asleep.

"Doc." He pushed himself up from the chair and stood. "What is it? What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong." Dr. Marquardt was standing on the other side of DiNozzo's bed, checking the monitors and making more notes in his chart. That chart was going to be enormous by the time all was said and done. "We discontinued the Versed about twenty minutes ago, and he'll be waking up soon." She glanced back at him with a smile, by far the most genuine one he'd seen on her face all night. "I thought you'd want to be awake for that."

He nodded and looked down at DiNozzo, but he looked back up almost immediately. "Discontinued the Versed? I thought you said you couldn't do that."

"Technically, we could have. But for his comfort, I didn't want to," she said. "Not so long as he was on the vent."

Gibbs caught her meaning instantly, and he stood straighter. "His lungs?"

"They're clear," she said. "No signs of pneumonia. There is still a chance he could develop it, but that risk is much smaller than it was six hours ago, and the antibiotics he's receiving should take care of any infection. Plus, the swelling in his throat is starting to subside, so if he should have any problems, we'll be able to secure an airway without any trouble."

He looked back down at Tony. There was a pinch between his eyebrows that hadn't been there before, and the muscles in his face weren't as relaxed as they had been.

"His saturation levels aren't as high as I'd like them to be, so he's still going to need oxygen, but we're going to use a mask. It'll be easier on him."

"Blood pressure?"

"Stabilized. It's at 95/60 now. It's still lower than I want it to be, but it's on its way up. It's going up slowly, but that's much better than the way it was jumping around two hours ago."

"What about his heart?"

Tony's eyes were moving around under his eyelids, and the muscles at the sides of his mouth were twitching. He was definitely waking up.

"Also better," Dr. Marquardt said. She stepped closer to DiNozzo's bed, and Gibbs looked up at her. "There is still some fluid, but most of it's gone. We'll keep the head of his bed elevated, and we're going to keep the diuretic going for a while longer, but I feel confident saying that the danger has passed."

Gibbs nodded and turned back to Tony. "So he'll be able to go home in a week or so?"

"Oh, no. Not a week. At this rate, he'll be able to go home tomorrow."

Gibbs snapped his head up. "What?"

Dr. Marquardt nodded and smiled once more. "Once we get him off the vent, if he doesn't have any other complications, we'll keep him for twenty-four hours for observation, but that's it. We'll watch him for infection, to make sure the CHF isn't coming back, and for any potential increase in intracranial pressure. But honestly, Agent Gibbs, the odds of any of that happening are incredibly low. Once his blood pressure is above 110/65, his blood volume is over 90%, and his sats are above 95% without supplemental oxygen, there's no reason for him to stay."

"That's insane." He shook his head in denial and confusion. "Seven hours ago, he was fifteen minutes from dead."

"I know it seems crazy," she admitted. "But it's not. Like I said last night, the only immediate threat to his life was the blood loss, and that ceased to be a danger as soon as we stopped him from losing more and started replacing what he'd already lost. So long as he continues recovering from the minor complications he's encountered and doesn't develop any more, he'll be fine."

He wanted to argue with her more, wanted to explain to her exactly why it was vital to Tony's continued survival that he not be released from the hospital, but he didn't have the chance. Tony's eyelids fluttered again, his eyebrows lowered, and within seconds, Gibbs was looking directly into a pair of green eyes that were clouded with confusion, widened in fear, and glassy from painkillers.

"Hey, DiNozzo."

He wanted to smile. He wanted to laugh. He wanted to tell Tony that it was over and he was safe and that everything was going to be okay. But he couldn't do any of those things. He'd made a promise, and he had a job to do. He couldn't just tell him; he had to show him.

"It's about time you woke up."

* * *

Someone was going to die.

Okay, maybe not die. But someone was going to seriously regret the day they were born. Or maybe just the day they pissed him off. Or maybe just the night before when they'd shown up for work but hadn't bothered to do their damn job.

He really didn't care.

Tim hadn't even waited for the elevator. As soon Abby had calmed down enough that she wasn't shaking and crying in his arms anymore, he'd headed for the stairs and run all the way to the squad room. He'd gone straight to his desk, loaded up the security footage, and forced himself to sit through the entire thing. Repeatedly.

Twenty-three seconds. That was how long it had taken for the first man to strangle Tony into unconsciousness and a second man to walk up and stick a needle in his neck. It took another thirty-six seconds for them to pick up Tony's weapon and keys, throw him into his car, and drive away.

Fifty-nine seconds. That was it. Fifty-nine seconds had brought a perfectly normal night crashing to a halt. Fifty-nine seconds had left Tony alone in the hands of two men who tortured him nearly to death in Gibbs' basement. Fifty-nine seconds had almost cost Tony his life.

Fifty-nine seconds that someone should have seen.

He glanced at the clock on his computer. It was 5:30 in the morning. Tony had been attacked at 8:09 the night before, and the security guards worked twelve-hour shifts.

Tim jumped up from his chair and ran back down the stairs, but he didn't go to the lab. His mind was whirling, the images that he'd seen on the computer screen playing over and over again. He burst through the door on the main level and made his way across the lobby. The few people who were there that early in the morning looked up at him, several of them smiled, and a few called out a greeting, but he stalked right past them and ignored them all. He had a purpose and a goal. He had a destination. He had an objective.

He had a target.

He pulled open the door to the security center roughly and without announcing himself. The guard behind the desk - a man named Duncan, Tim remembered, Robert Duncan - looked up from the video monitors in front of him and smiled.

"Agent McGee," Duncan said brightly. "Is there something I can …?"

"Did you work the cameras last night?"

Duncan's face was instantly clouded with confusion. "What?"

Tim stepped closer to him and lowered his voice. "Did you work the cameras last night?" he repeated, pausing after every word.

"Yeah, I …"

He didn't wait for any more. He grabbed Duncan by the front of his jacket, pulled him out of his chair, and slammed him into the wall.

"Where the hell were you?!"

"What? I don't … what …?" Duncan stammered and sputtered, and the expression on his face was one of pure shock.

"At 20:09 last night!" Tim yanked Duncan toward him, then shoved him into the wall again. "Where were you?"

"At 20:09? I think I ... wait." Tim pulled him forward again, and Duncan held up his hands in supplication. "Wait!"

Tim didn't shove him again, but he didn't let go of his jacket, either.

"Where?"

"We got a call," Duncan said. "About 20:00 hours. A report of someone trying to breach the front gate."

"And?" His patience had done more than worn thin; it was completely gone. He wanted answers, and he wanted them yesterday.

"And I responded with everyone else. It turned out to be a false alarm. There wasn't anyone there, or any sign that there ever was. We're trying to track down who it was that called it in. I was back in here by 20:15. I reviewed the tapes from while I was gone, and I saw no …"

"You reviewed the tapes?" Tim couldn't keep the disbelief out of his voice. "All of them?"

Duncan nodded his head quickly. "For those fifteen minutes I was out front, yes."

He slammed him into the wall again.

"What?" Duncan's expression had changed. There was no confusion, shock, or uncertainty left on his face. There was fear.

"You'd better hope that I just caught you lying," Tim said through clenched teeth. "Because if you're telling the truth, I'm going do a lot more than have more than your job."

"I don't understand!"

"It's simple." He leaned forward until he was only inches from Duncan's face. "Either you didn't follow protocol, and you didn't review the tapes, or you watched Agent DiNozzo be attacked in the parking lot, strangled and drugged and kidnapped in his own damn car, and you did nothing about it." Tim narrowed his eyes and locked them on Duncan's. "Which is it?"

Duncan opened and closed his mouth, but no words came out.

"Which is it!"

Duncan's entire face fell. He closed his eyes and lowered his head. "I didn't review the tapes," he said quietly.

"You stupid son of a …"

"I was only gone fifteen minutes!" Duncan protested. "And I swear to you, I swear, Agent DiNozzo's car never left the Yard!"

"Oh, it didn't?" Tim let go of Duncan's jacket and took a step back. "Then how did it end up parked in front of Agent Gibbs' house?"

Duncan shook his head. "No. You can check the logs yourself. He never signed out at any of the gates that were open last night."

Tim tilted his head slightly. "The south gate," he said, almost to himself. "The south gate is still closed from Kale busting through it."

"Yes," Duncan said.

"Was anyone guarding it?"

"Of course!" Duncan answered. "The guard booth was damaged, and the camera is offline, but Gary was on foot patrol."

"Has Gary checked in yet this morning?"

"Yes. And he checked in every hour all night long, just like he was scheduled to do. The gate is barricaded. No one can come in or go out. Everyone has to go through the other gates, and I'm telling you, Agent DiNozzo never did."

Tim shook his head and stepped forward again. Duncan assumed that just because the south gate was barricaded, no one would use it. But to people who were trying to get in and out without being seen, an unmanned gate would seem like an open invitation, barricade or no. One man on foot patrol would have been easy for the men who'd attacked Tony to evade. Tony hadn't seemed to hear them, which meant they were skilled at stealth, and they obviously knew their way around the inside of the Yard.

"You're an idiot."

"Hey! Now, look, I don't know what happened to DiNozzo, but whatever it was, it wasn't my fault."

That was the final straw. Tim grabbed Duncan's jacket with his right hand and pinned him to the wall. He clenched his left hand into a fist and pulled it back.

"Timmy!"

Abby's voice surprised him, and he dropped his hands to his sides and turned to face her. She looked as shocked as Duncan had earlier, but she looked excited, too. "What, Abby?"

"I've got something."

He had no idea what she had, didn't even really remember what she'd been working on when he'd left her lab, but it whatever it was, the fact that she'd come to find him herself rather than just calling him told him it was important. He turned his back on Duncan and walked toward the door, but he wasn't finished yet.

"Your shift ends in an hour," he said without looking back. "When you leave, you clean out your desk, you turn in your badge, and you don't come back."

"You can't fire me!"

"No, but Director Vance can, and I promise you that he will." Tim stopped next to Abby and turned back around. "You left one man on foot, with no surveillance or backup, to guard a trashed gate, and at least two unauthorized people made it into the Yard. Those two men attacked and kidnapped an NCIS agent in the parking lot. You might have stopped them, if you'd been paying attention, might have saved him, if you'd reviewed the tapes, but you didn't. You didn't follow protocol, you didn't do your job, and you almost got a man killed. That man is one of Director Vance's agents," he said. "A member of Agent Gibbs' team, and my partner. My friend. You're done."

He put his hand on Abby's arm and led her out the door. He slammed it behind him before turning to face her.

"What have you got, Abs?"

"I know who attacked Tony!"

* * *

"Agent DiNozzo?"

Dr. Marquardt leaned down over Tony's bed. He turned his eyes away from Gibbs and toward her, and she smiled at him. "Can I call you Tony?"

DiNozzo nodded his head ever-so-slightly. "Okay, Tony. I'm Dr. Marquardt. I'm your surgeon. Do you know where you are?"

He glanced around the room, locking eyes with Gibbs briefly as he did, then looked back at her and nodded again.

"That's good," she said. "Now, I don't imagine having that tube down your throat is very fun, is it?" A slight head shake was the answer. "How about we get it out of there, then? Have you ever been extubated before?" When Tony shook his head again, she looked up at Gibbs.

"They didn't put him on the vent when he had the plague," he explained. "He came close to it, but they didn't."

"That's okay," Dr. Marquardt said. "It's really pretty easy. I'm going to count to three, and I need you to blow out as hard as you can, okay? Don't inhale, though. Just blow out. Got it?" Another nod. "On three then. One. Two. Three."

It only took a second to get the tube out. Tony, in true DiNozzo fashion, immediately turned toward Gibbs and opened his mouth to talk. His first inhale caused a coughing fit that doubled him over, pulling his shoulders and upper body up from the bed. Gibbs knew the second the strained muscles in his chest, ribs, and back made themselves known, because Tony went white. The increased pain made him inhale deeper, which in turn made the cough worse.

No amount of promises made to Ducky could stop Gibbs from reaching out to grab Tony's shoulders and push him gently back against the bed. "Easy, Tony," he said. "Slow down before you rip yourself in half."

"Talking is probably not a good idea right now," Dr. Marquardt added. "I know your throat is irritated from the tube, and it's still pretty badly swollen. It's going to hurt for a while, so let's try to keep talking to a minimum."

Tony nodded at her silently as he concentrated on slowing his breathing down, and his eyes watered as he tried – and failed – to swallow another cough.

"Agent Gibbs." He looked up, and Dr. Marquardt handed him a Styrofoam cup with a spoon in it. "Ice chips," she explained. "They'll help."

Gibbs wondered what Ducky would have said, if he'd seen him spoon-feeding Tony ice chips. It wasn't something he'd ever done before, and it really didn't fit with the whole 'bastard' thing, but from the look on Tony's face at that moment, it didn't much matter.

"That better?" he asked after the second spoon.

Tony let his head sink into his pillow and closed his eyes. "Ow," he whispered.

"You're in pain, Tony?" Gibbs rolled his eyes at the question; to him, the answer was obvious. Tony nodded again. "I'll get something for that. We're going to be moving you into your own room in just a bit, and it'll be a lot easier for all of us if you're not hurting when we do it."

She moved away and headed for the nurse's station, and Tony turned to Gibbs.

"What …?" His voice was breathy, haggard and broken.

"It's morphine," Gibbs said. "And you need it, so no arguing."

Tony shook his head, and his eyes widened. "No," he whispered. "What … happened?"

Gibbs stood straighter, but he never took his eyes off of Tony. "What happened?" he echoed. "You mean what happened to you?"

Tony nodded and looked up at Gibbs expectantly. Gibbs had made a mistake reading Tony's eyes when he'd first woken up. There was no fear in them; there was nothing but confusion. He wasn't scared, because he didn't know there was anything to be afraid of.

"You don't remember."

Tony shook his head silently.

Dr. Marquardt returned with a syringe in her hand. "That's perfectly normal, Tony," she said. She slid the needle into his IV line and pressed the plunger without pausing in her explanation. "The medication that we used to keep you sedated while you were on the vent can affect short-term memory. You also have a substantial head injury. That could be contributing to it."

Tony's eyebrows lowered again, and Gibbs realized that the whole time he'd been trying to read Tony's reaction, Tony had been studying his. Ducky had been right about what Tony would be looking for, and he wasn't finding it. He knew something was wrong, and he'd already picked up on the fact that something was off about how Gibbs was acting.

"What?" Tony asked again. "Bad … isn't it?"

He took a deep breath and forced himself back into his normal detached mode. "You've had worse," he said. He didn't believe it himself, couldn't think of any time – aside from the plague – when Tony had been hurt anywhere nearly as bad. But Tony had a history of believing every word he said, whether or not it was true. "You're fine."

"Don't ... feel fine."

Of all the times for Tony to argue with him, he had to choose that one.

Dr. Marquardt picked an oxygen mask up from the table beside her, stretched the strap out, and reached down to put it in place. "We need to get your oxygen levels up, Tony," she said. Gibbs didn't know if she was trying to distract Tony on purpose, but he was grateful to her all the same. "No more talking. I want you to concentrate on breathing."

"No." He lifted his right hand and weakly pushed her hands away. "Boss ..."

"Hey." Gibbs grabbed Tony's arm and put it back at his side. "What did she just tell you about talking?"

Tony's eyes narrowed, and the steady beep of the heart monitor sped up. He was getting agitated.

He was getting pissed.

"You," Tony said as he looked Gibbs directly in the eye. "Tell ... me."

He glanced at Dr. Marquardt, and he could see the sympathy in her eyes. She knew that even though it would fall to her to explain to Tony the generalities of his injuries, when the time came to fill him in on the specific details, it would be Gibbs who would tell him. She looked as uncertain as he felt, but their reasons were different. She thought Tony was asking what his injuries were. Gibbs knew he was asking what had been done to him, who had done it, and had Gibbs caught them.

He took a deep breath, turned slightly so his hip rested against the bedrail, let go of Tony's hand, and crossed his arms across his chest.

"I can't, Tony."

"Why ... not?"

He let his head fall forward slightly, and looked down at the floor. "Because I don't know."

Tony's head sank more deeply into the pillow, and he let out a pained sigh. Dr. Marquardt took the opportunity to settle the oxygen mask in place and adjust the knobs on the machine it was attached to.

Gibbs' mind was filled with a thousand different implications of what Tony had said. If he didn't remember what had happened to him, then there was no way he could tell them who'd done it. He couldn't tell them who grabbed him, where, or when. He couldn't tell them what they'd said. He couldn't identify their faces or their voices. He couldn't tell them anything, because he didn't remember.

Without Tony's testimony, they had nothing. They couldn't convict DelMar on nothing more than circumstantial evidence, disbelief in coincidences, and gut feelings. Tony had been the sure thing, the one person who Gibbs had been counting on to nail the bastard. What kind of a case were they going to be able to build without him?

Gibbs shook his head and made himself look Tony in the eye one last time.

"I don't know."


	8. Chapter 8

* * *

"You know, you could just tell me," Tim said for the third time since they'd started back down to the lab together. "It might go a little faster that way."

Abby just shook her head.

"At least give me a hint? Tell me how you figured out who it was."

Abby glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, then stood a bit straighter beside him. "Promise me you won't yell at me."

"What?" He was floored. How could she think he'd yell at her for doing her job? "Of course I won't yell at you. How'd you do it? Fingerprints? DNA match?"

"Well, after you left, I kinda … watched the security footage again."

"Abby!"

She spun toward him and stuck her finger in his face. "I told you you'd yell at me!"

He dropped his head and closed his eyes. "Okay," he said. "Okay, I'm sorry I yelled. But you shouldn't have done that alone. And you shouldn't have … you shouldn't have had to do that, Abs." He lifted his head and looked her straight in the eye. "You shouldn't have had to."

"Yeah, well," she said softly. The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open in front of her. "You shouldn't have had to shove Duncan into the wall and threaten to beat his face in." She stepped out of the elevator, and looked back at him over her shoulder. "But you did have to, didn't you?"

"Yeah," he admitted reluctantly, nodding his head as he followed her into the hallway. "I did."

"And I had to watch the tape again." She walked into her lab and crossed directly to her computer. "For a lot of the same reasons. Yeah, it's evidence, but it was more than that. I just had to, you know? For Tony. I just … I couldn't let him be the only one who knows what happened to him."

Tim sighed deeply and nodded his head slowly. "He's not," he said. "And neither are you."

Abby smiled sadly, and then turned and hit a few keys on her keyboard. "So. I watched it a few times just to get a general idea of what happened, to see if they'd left something in the parking lot that we could collect. I thought maybe I could see them touch something that we could lift prints from, or spit on the ground, or just … something." She glanced up at him. "I don't see anything obvious, but you should still go out there and look. I don't think they were far from Gibbs' spot; they both came out from behind his car."

Tim nodded his head, stepped closer to her, and looked at the computer monitor across her shoulder. "I saw that when I watched it upstairs, but I haven't been out there yet. The parking lot is my next stop after I leave here. Fornell should be here by then."

"Think we should fingerprint Bossman's car?"

Tim shrugged. "It's always worth a shot. I'll do that this afternoon, when I go to the hospital to brief him."

Abby bit her lip and glanced at the floor. "Have you heard anything? Is he awake yet?"

He shook his head in response. "I don't know. I haven't talked to Gibbs since he put that picture in my hand, and I haven't heard anything new since we got back here."

Abby sighed, and then turned back to her computer. "Okay. So, I watched it through a few times, and then I started going frame-by-frame. Just in case. And … it worked. We got lucky. We got one frame, just one, but it's a good one."

"Yes!" Tim squeezed her shoulders, then stepped around her and walked toward the plasma. Abby hit a few more keys on her keyboard as he rounded the corner of the table. The single frame she'd found was frozen on the screen.

Tim ignored the majority of the scene, ignored the look on Tony's face and the fact that he was paused in the middle of fighting for his life. He focused solely on the man who'd run up behind Tony with the rope. 

Who was, in that one frame, looking directly at the camera.

Abby dragged a green box across the screen to isolate his face, hit a few more keys, and a Maryland driver's license picture popped up on top of the video. 

"Meet Marco Santori."

Tim's eyes narrowed in hatred as he studied the man's features. He had short black hair, brown eyes, and a very large and crooked nose, which had obviously been broken at some point. He had pit scars and pockmarks all over his face, and what looked to be a rather impressive scar ran the length of his jawline, from his right ear to his chin. He'd ambushed Tony, attacked him from above and behind, and he had two inches and sixty or seventy pounds on him.

Tony hadn't had a chance.

"Who is he?"

"He is one of the few soldiers in Azari's organization whose name the FBI knows." A few more clicks on the computer, and a new file – an arrest record – appeared next to his picture. "He's been arrested eleven times but only convicted once. He's still on parole."

Tim read down the list of charges quickly. "Nine arrests for Grand Theft Auto," he said. "One burglary and a domestic charge." He tilted his head slightly. "Why him?" he wondered. "He's a car thief. How did he go from stealing cars to kidnapping and torturing a federal agent?"

Abby walked around to join Tim in front of the plasma. "Well, the most obvious possibility is that his boss told him to do it," she said. "But I'm guessing it has more to do with something a little less obvious."

Tim turned his head. "What's that?"

"He's a bit more than a car thief. He's a specialist. All of the cars he was accused of stealing disappeared from police impound yards." 

Tim raised his eyebrows, and Abby smiled at him.

"Locked impound yards," she said. "With video surveillance and security."

Tim's eyes widened and he turned back to the screen. "He knows how to get through fences and past security guards," he said. "He'd have been able to get in and out through the south gate without even trying."

"And get Tony's car out without anyone knowing it was gone."

"And he's our tie to DelMar. All we have to do is pick him up and get him to flip." Tim turned back to the plasma excitedly. "We need to get a BOLO …"

"Already sent out," Abby said. "I put Agent Fornell's name on it." Her voice lowered in both tone and volume, and there was a clear edge of hatred and disgust to it. "The second this scumbag pokes his head out, we'll have him."

Tim turned toward her again. "This is good, Abby. This is really, really good. I'm going back upstairs, because I still have to tell Director Vance about Duncan, but the second Agent Fornell gets here, we're going out to the parking lot to see what we can find." He started to walk past her, but then suddenly he turned, grabbed her by the shoulders, and kissed her.

"I love you."

She watched him leave, and then she walked back to her computer with a grin on her face.

"I know."

* * *

Tony leaned back against his pillows and closed his eyes.

He knew there was something huge missing from his memory, and that wasn't a feeling he liked. He'd seen - and felt - enough of his injuries to know that something really, really bad had happened to him, but he had no idea what it was. The bandages that covered his lower arms told him he'd been tied up, and if the tingling in his fingers was anything to go by, it had been tightly enough to do some damage. His chest looked like a badly carved Thanksgiving turkey, his voice sounded like a bullfrog with laryngitis, and the front of his left leg throbbed in time with his heart. His head was thumping and pounding like the Ohio State drum line, his shoulder hurt like hell, and there was something seriously uncomfortable going on between his shoulder blades on his back.

But that wasn't the worst of it.

The worst part was how weird Gibbs was acting. No, that wasn't right. Weird wasn't a strong enough word. Gibbs was being nice. Too nice. The last time Tony remembered him acting that way was when Kate died. That was enough to alarm him on its own, but combined with the fact that he was obviously making an effort to act like nothing was wrong, it was a bit more disturbing. That Gibbs was trying so hard to act normal, and was failing so miserably at doing it, was downright scary. 

It was really starting to freak him out.

"You still hurting?"

Tony shook his head without opening his eyes. He was lying, and he was sure Gibbs knew it, but he wasn't going to admit it. Moving from the ICU to the private room he was currently occupying had been a painful experience, large amounts of narcotics notwithstanding, and it wasn't one he ever wanted to repeat. From the waist up, every part of him hurt. What he probably needed was another dose of morphine, maybe along with a nice strong sedative, enough to knock him out for another twelve hours or so.

But what he wanted, more than anything, was to remember what the hell had happened. And the drugs were messing with his head and keeping him from doing any significant amount of thinking. What little thinking he had managed so far was disconnected, random, and made very little, if any, sense. He wanted control of his mind back, and if feeling the pain was the only way he could get that, then he'd just have to suck it up.

But damned if he knew how he was going to pull that off. The doctor had said that most of the pain was coming from pulled muscles, but he didn't think he believed her. He'd never had a pulled muscle hurt that much in his life ... but then again, he'd never pulled every muscle in his torso at the same time before. Even breathing was torture. He knew that he wasn't getting enough oxygen, even with the mask, because of how much it hurt, and that wasn't making thinking any easier. 

Whether he refused more morphine or admitted he needed it probably didn't matter much either way.

"Sorry, Boss," he muttered.

Gibbs sat up a bit straighter in the chair next to him. "For what?"

"Pretty useless," he croaked. He hated the sound of his voice. He hated how weak and broken and raspy it was, hated how much it hurt to even whisper, hated the way the oxygen mask muffled what little sound he did manage to make. He hated that the one thing he did best - talk - was one of the many things he couldn't do at all. He opened his eyes and turned his head on the pillow. "Some witness."

Gibbs stood up and moved closer to his bed. "One - don't apologize."

"Weakness."

"No." Gibbs shook his head. "You didn't do anything to apologize for. Two - you're not useless. And three - who said you're a witness?"

He stared up at his boss and blinked in disbelief. "Not stupid," he said. 

"That's debatable, DiNozzo."

Tony grinned in spite of himself. That was the first time Gibbs had insulted him since he woke up. It felt good, in a weird sort of way. Then he took as deep a breath as he could manage and tried to focus on the conversation - if his one-syllable words and two-word sentences could be called that - they were having.

"This," he said, indicating his chest, neck and shoulder with his right hand. "Not an accident."

Gibbs shook his head slowly. "No, you're right. It wasn't."

"I saw them."

That earned him a nod and a tight-lipped expression from Gibbs. "That's the going assumption."

"Don't remember."

"Yeah, we've been through this part."

"Need to." Tony closed his eyes again, and he tried to take another breath, but the pain that shot across his chest made it catch in his throat. He blew it out and took another, more slowly and carefully. "Gotta tell you," he muttered. "Gotta remember. Gotta help. Gotta …"

The tap to the top of his head was lighter than usual, almost gentle, and he really should have expected it. All the same, it took him by surprise and sent a spike of pain straight into his brain. His eyes flew open.

"Knock it off." 

Gibbs was right beside him, just inches from his face. It brought back unbidden memories of another time – lying in another hospital bed, drowning under blue lights, when Gibbs had acted much the same way. He lowered his eyebrows in concentration, but they shot up again in realization. Gibbs was acting the way he had after Kate died, yes. But he was also acting the way he had the last time Tony had almost …

"Died?"

Gibbs shook his head slowly and stood up with a sigh. "No, Tony, you didn't die. You're talking to me, aren't you?"

"Close?"

Another nod. Slow. Reluctant.

"Yeah," Gibbs said softly. "Close."

The muscles in his chest made themselves known again, and he gasped in a pained breath. He had another question to ask, but he couldn't draw enough air into his lungs to do it. In the end, he didn't have to ask it, anyway, because Gibbs answered it on his own.

"Too damn close, DiNozzo." Gibbs wrapped his hands around the bed rail and looked down at him. "Too damn close."

* * *

Tim was on his way down the stairs from Vance's office when he heard the elevator ding and saw Fornell step out of it. The FBI agent had a cell phone to his ear, and it was obvious he was talking to someone on the other end. Tim slowed his pace and watched Fornell cross to the squad room. 

"Okay. We'll be right there."

Fornell closed his phone and glanced around. He saw Tim standing on the landing above him and tilted his head.

"McGee," he said. "Did you put a BOLO out on a Marco Santori?"

"Yes!" He turned and ran down the last of the stairs, spun around the bannister, and jogged up the walkway. "Was that a hit on it?"

"One thing at a time," Fornell said, holding up his hand to cut off any more questions. "Bring me up to speed. What'd I miss?"

"A whole lot." Tim walked past him and straight to his desk. He grabbed the remote, turned to the plasma, and brought Santori's picture up. "Tony was attacked in the parking lot. We saw it on the security footage, and …"

"Wait, he was attacked here?" Fornell's eyes widened. "Gibbs isn't gonna be happy about that."

"No one's happy about that," Tim said. He knew there was an edge to his voice, but he didn't try to disguise it. "Least of all Tony." Fornell dropped his head slightly, and Tim continued. "But at least we got good footage out of it. Abby found one frame that had a clear shot of one of his attackers, and she got a hit on facial recognition. It was Santori."

"Kid's a car thief," Fornell said, and Tim nodded his head. "He's kinda dumb, but if anyone in Azari's organization could get in and out of this place without being seen, it's Santori."

"That's what we thought, too." Tim put the remote down and turned to Fornell again. "Now, who was …?"

"DC Metro," Fornell said. 

He didn't seem very happy about the fact that they'd gotten a hit on the only suspect they'd identified so far. He also didn't seem to be in any great hurry to give Tim any more information than he already had.

"They've got him?"

Fornell nodded slowly. "Yeah, they've got him." 

Tim's sudden sense of success was shattered by the look on Fornell's face and the next words that came out of his mouth.

"Get your stuff, McGee. You're not gonna like this."

* * *

Gibbs sighed and leaned back against the windowsill.

"Why don't we try this another way?" he asked. "One that doesn't involve you talking?"

He wasn't happy with the way Tony looked, with the way his forehead was furrowed with pain, or the way he refused to admit that he was hurting at all. He'd known the morphine would be an uphill battle, but he hadn't expected Tony to start fighting it so soon. He was starting to think of calling Dr. Marquardt and asking her to slip something into his IV, but there was a reason why Tony was lying about being in pain and refusing more drugs to help him deal with it. Forcing it on him would piss him off to no end.

Gibbs wasn't quite sure when not pissing Tony off had started mattering, but he ignored the impulse all the same.

He knew that Tony answered his question, because he could see the oxygen mask moving and fogging up, but he was too far away to hear what he was saying. He pushed himself away from the window and walked back to the bed.

"What was that, DiNozzo?"

"Have to," Tony said. "Remember."

Even if he had wanted to argue, it was a fight he was going to lose, and he knew it. He'd already lost it half a dozen times. There was no way Tony was going to give up on trying to jog his memory. As much as he hated to see it, because he knew what it was costing Tony to keep going, he had to admit – to himself, if to no one else – that he was proud as hell.

"Okay. Then we stay focused. I'll ask you questions, and you answer them. Short answers. 'Yes or no' questions get a nod or a shake – no talking. Got it?"

"Got it … Boss."

"That was a 'yes or no' question."

"Sorry."

He wanted to smack him upside the head again, but the way Tony had winced and paled after the last one stopped him from doing it. The grin he could see around the edges of the oxygen mask both irritated and reassured him. No matter how much pain he might have been in, if Tony could still find the strength to be an incurable smartass, then he was going to be just fine.

"What's the last thing you remember about last night?"

Tony closed his eyes, and his face smoothed out as he took another breath. It took him a few seconds to fight back the last of the narcotics that were clouding his mind and pull everything back together. Gibbs knew the second he'd managed to do it, because his whole face changed. 

Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo, levelheaded and highly competent investigator that he was, was back in control.

"Elevator."

"Getting on or getting off?"

"Off." Tony inhaled again. "Kicked me out."

"Well, yeah, I did. You wouldn't shut up. Seems to be a thing with you."

A ghost of a smile danced across Tony's face, and then he lowered his eyebrows.

"Stefano."

Gibbs' heart jumped into his throat, but he swallowed it quickly. "Stefano DelMar?" 

He tried to force his voice to stay level, but he didn't know if he'd actually managed to do it. He hadn't once doubted that DelMar was involved in the attack on Tony. Even someone who did believe in coincidences – which Gibbs didn't, never had and never would – would have had a hard time believing in that one. But he couldn’t give Tony any indication that the name might mean something. 

"What do you remember about him?"

"Brewer," Tony said. "Strauss."

As quickly as his hope had risen, it deflated. Tony was remembering what had gotten him kicked out of the office for the night, not what had happened after he left.

"Yeah. We'd just started looking at DelMar for their murders."

If Tony heard him, he gave no indication of it. He scrunched his forehead tighter and took a breath. It obviously wasn't easy for him, but he was pulling himself forward. He was starting to dig something out of the void of his memory. 

"Parking lot." Tony swallowed hard, and his breathing picked up speed, but he kept going. "Unlocked my car."

"You're doing great, DiNozzo." Gibbs didn't want to ask any more questions. Tony was leading the way, reaching into his mind and dragging out the missing pieces one by one. "Keep it up."

Suddenly, Tony's whole face changed. Instead of serious and focused, he looked scared. Gibbs didn't know what had caused the shift, but it didn't take much imagination to guess. He leaned forward.

"Tony?"

Tony's breathing had reached an almost alarming speed, and even Gibbs' untrained eye could see that it was shallow. His lips were barely parted, and his chest was barely rising and falling. He wasn't moving enough oxygen at all. 

"Hey, calm down. You've gotta breathe."

"Couldn't," Tony forced out.

"Couldn't what?"

"Breathe." 

"You couldn't breathe?" Gibbs' own heart sped up in response to Tony's words. "In the parking lot?"

Tony nodded his head rapidly.

"Why not? What happened?"

Tony's eyes shot open, and his right hand flew up to the angry red mark around his throat. His fingers curled along the side of his neck, like they were wrapping around an invisible piece of rope and trying to pull it away. 

The realization slammed into Gibbs like a runaway semi. 

"In the parking lot?" he asked again. "On the Yard?"

Tony was nodding rapidly, and that time, there was no mistaking the terror in his eyes. "Couldn't … can't …"

"Can't what? What can't you do, Tony?"

"Breathe," Tony forced out. "Can't … hurts …" He was definitely hyperventilating at that point – the condensation that his breath was leaving on the inside of the oxygen mask was only shrinking and growing, but never going away completely. He had his right hand balled into a fist, and he was pressing it against his chest. 

"Boss …"

Gibbs jumped forward, grabbed the call button, and pressed it repeatedly. 

"Easy, DiNozzo," he said. "Calm down."

It was nothing he hadn't done before. As much as he'd hoped he'd never have to do it again, it was still almost second nature. He moved closer to Tony, slid his right arm behind his shoulders, and pulled him up from the bed as carefully as he could while still moving quickly. He didn't want to jar his shoulder, didn't want to cause him any pain at all, but some things were more important than others.

"Pull your chest up," he said. "Open it up, Tony. Come on."

The edges of his lips were already turning blue, and his eyes were starting to roll back. Gibbs put a hand against the side of Tony's face and forced him to turn his head.

"Look at me, Tony," he ordered. "Breathe with me."

Gibbs could hear the breaths rattling their way into and out of Tony's lungs, hear the wheezing gasps that were passing for inhales, and feel the way Tony's body shuddered with every one. When the dry, hacking coughs started, Gibbs tightened his hold on Tony, turned to face the door, and called out with everything he had.

"Doc!"


	9. Chapter 9

* * *

"In and out, DiNozzo. You can do this." He had no way of knowing for sure, but the words seemed to have a positive effect. Tony was trying to hold himself up straighter, trying to open up his chest and lungs the way he'd had to do before, and he was struggling to focus blurry green eyes on Gibbs' face.

"Count it with me. In – two, three, four. Out – two, three, four."

It surprised him, how much he remembered from Tony's last bout with pneumonia. 

_'You don't know that's what this is,'_ he chided himself. _'Don't borrow trouble. He's got enough.'_

"Hurts …"

"I know it does, Tony." And he did know. Even if Tony hadn't told him, the amount of pain written on his face would have given it away. "Doc'll be here in just a second, and she'll fix it. You just keep breathing." He'd said those words to him just a few hours before, and Tony had obeyed him then. He had no reason to doubt that he'd do as he was told again. "Don't stop. Count."

"In … three …" 

Tony tried, he did, but he didn't have enough air to waste on talking. He lifted his right hand weakly and grabbed on to the first thing he touched - Gibbs' sleeve. He fisted his fingers in the fabric and tightened his grip on it like he was holding on for dear life.

Gibbs closed his eyes and tipped his face to the ceiling when he realized that was exactly what Tony was doing.

"I'll count," he said. "You breathe."

"Agent Gibbs!"

Dr. Marquardt, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, ran in, followed by two nurses. She threw her jacket across the back of the chair Gibbs had spent the morning sitting in. "What happened?"

He looked across at her. "I don't know," he said. "He was talking. He was fine …" 

_'He was pretending. He was lying. And you let him.'_

"You're having trouble breathing, Tony?"

Tony grasped the sleeve even tighter, let his head fall against Gibbs' shoulder, and nodded his head.

"Okay. This isn't going to take long. We'll have you fixed back up in no time." She pressed the palm of her hand against Tony's chest, and then cursed softly to herself. "That's what I thought, " she muttered. She looked up at Gibbs, and he saw irritation in her eyes. "Down," she said. "Put him down."

Gibbs lowered Tony back to the bed carefully as Dr. Marquardt turned to one of her nurses. "Juanita, I need 2mg of Versed and another 12mg of morphine. IV."

Gibbs got Tony as settled as he could while the doctor and nurses bustled around the side of the bed. But just because he was focusing most of his attention on DiNozzo, that didn't mean he missed what the doctor was asking for. 

"Versed, Doc? The vent?"

"No." She answered him without looking at him, and her voice was tight.

A weak tug pulled his attention back to Tony, who hadn't released his grip on Gibbs' sleeve yet. His eyes were still open, but they were wide and filled with panic. His chest was still barely moving when he breathed, and the condensation on the inside of the mask was all but gone. "It's okay, Tony," he whispered. "Doc's got ya."

"Yes," Dr. Marquardt said. She was already injecting the medication she'd asked for into his IV line. "I've got him. And I need you to step out."

"What?" Gibbs jerked his head up and locked eyes with Dr. Marquardt across the bed.

That wasn't irritation in her eyes. That wasn't annoyance. That was anger. She was mad and getting madder.

"Step. Out." When he made no move to do as ordered, she narrowed her eyes and glared at him. "Now."

Gibbs shot another look at Tony, whose eyes were closing as he struggled to breathe. He untangled Tony's fingers from his sleeve gently, and then patted the back of his hand. "I'll be back, Tony," he promised. "You do whatever the doc says, got it?"

Tony's nod was almost imperceptible, but it was enough for Gibbs. He walked briskly around the end of the bed and crossed the room, but he turned back around just as he reached the door. 

Dr. Marquardt had her right hand against Tony's chest again, and she was massaging the muscles across his sternum. "I know it hurts," she was saying. "But you need to breathe. I promise, you'll feel a lot better in about sixty seconds, okay?"

Gibbs stayed where he was and watched the scene in front of him with intense interest. Dr. Marquardt was still rubbing Tony's chest, one of the nurses was taking his vitals, and the other was adjusting the dials on the oxygen machine next to his bed. 

"Out, Agent Gibbs." She didn't even look away from Tony, let alone turn to face him. "Or it will be a long, long time before you come back in here."

Gibbs yanked the door open without a word and stormed into the hallway. The first person he saw was Bruce Rivers, who was standing just to the right of the door, looking anxious.

"Is DiNozzo okay?" he asked. "I heard the alarm and saw the doctor running …"

Gibbs shook his head quickly, more in dismissal of the question than in answer to it. "I need you to call Fornell," he said. "Tell him to get the security videos from the Navy Yard. DiNozzo was attacked in my parking lot."

Rivers' eyes widened in surprise. "How do you know that?" he asked. "Does he remember what happened?"

Gibbs rolled his eyes. "He remembers that he was attacked in the parking lot."

"What about the rest of it? Does he know who it was? Did he …?"

"Sure, Rivers. He remembers everything." Gibbs was starting to remember why this man got on his nerves so badly. "I just thought I'd keep an important detail like that to myself."

Rivers sighed deeply and dropped his head. "Sorry, s … Agent Gibbs." 

"Don't apologize to me," he ground out through clenched teeth. "Just call Fornell." Rivers nodded nervously and pulled his phone out. "Not here. Go somewhere else. But not far. I haven't relieved you yet."

Rivers nodded again, walked further down the hallway, and disappeared around a corner.

Gibbs glanced across his shoulder at the closed door to Tony's room. He wanted to be in there; he needed to know what was going on. But he had been thrown out, and pissing Dr. Marquardt off any more than she already was wasn't an option. Besides, once again, he had a job to do. He sighed, pulled his own phone out, and hit a button on speed dial.

The first call went to voicemail, and Gibbs' heart plunged into his stomach. 

_'Never be unreachable.'_

It was one of the Rules; it was one of the most important. There was no way that Tim would ignore it. The only reason Tim wouldn't answer his phone was that he couldn't. And there was a man out there who liked grabbing and torturing his agents right under his nose.

"No way in hell," he muttered as he dialed again.

Tim answered that time, but not until the third ring. Gibbs could barely hear the, "Yeah, Boss?" over the blood that pounded in his ears. "Is Tony …?"

"You answer your damn phone when I call, McGee!" 

He heard a sigh on the other end, and in that one sound, he heard a thousand things that no one said. Tim was upset – very upset. 

Something was wrong. 

"Sorry, Boss. We're at a crime scene. I was talking to Ducky, and I … I didn't hear it ring."

 _'He's tired,'_ his mind supplied. _'He hasn't slept in two days. And neither have you.'_

None of what was happening was Tim's fault, but he was the one who had to deal with all of it. He was the one who was out there doing Gibbs' job. He was the one going without sleep, probably pushing himself harder than he should be, digging up evidence against DelMar and trying to get justice for Tony. Tim wasn't just doing everything he should have done; he was doing everything Gibbs should have been doing, too. And he was the one Gibbs was taking his anger and frustration out on.

Again.

"Is it Tony? Is he okay?"

Gibbs shook his head and closed his eyes. Then he realized what Tim had said, and he opened his eyes again.

"A crime scene?" he asked. "What crime scene?"

* * *

"God damn it."

Ducky looked up and gave him a sad smile. "Hello, Timothy." Tim squatted down next to Palmer, who glanced at him briefly before turning back to the dead body all three were studying. "I take it this development is a bad thing?"

"Not what I wanted to see, no," Tim admitted. He took his hat off and ran his other hand through his hair. "He was the only suspect we could identify. We were hoping he would tell us …" He let the sentence trail off. There was no point in thinking about could-have-beens.

"Who else was involved?" Ducky finished for him. Tim nodded slowly. "He still might, you know. The dead are often very informative."

Tim took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. "What've we got, Ducky?"

"Preliminary cause of death is a single gunshot to the side of the head." He pointed it out, but there was no need. Tim had seen the small hole behind Marco Santori's right ear as soon as he'd walked up. "I do not expect that to change. Fired from intermediate range, somewhere between ten and eighteen inches, I'd say."

"He turned his back on him," Tim observed. "He trusted him. He didn't expect him to kill him."

"It is very likely that Mr. Santori had a belief in some sort of … honor among scumbags."

Tim had to smile at that. It was a rare thing for Ducky to speak ill of the dead, but he couldn't think of anyone else who deserved it more. 

"Exit wound?"

"None." Ducky paused, and Tim looked up. When he met the older man's eye, he got a confident nod from him. "We'll have a bullet for you," Ducky continued. "That will give you a weapon to trace."

Tim shook his head. "I don't think it's going to matter."

"Why not?" Palmer asked.

"Could a 9mm have made that hole, Ducky?"

"Yes," Ducky answered without hesitation. "Most certainly it could have."

"A Sig, maybe?"

"Ballistics and weapon identification is Abby's area of … wait. A Sig? Why are you asking that?"

Tim sighed again. He hoped he was wrong, but his gut was telling him he was right. "When you send the bullet to her, make sure she runs it against the weapons checked out from the armory."

"Timothy …"

Tim pushed himself to his feet and put his hat back on. "Tony's weapon is missing," he explained. "He dropped it when they attacked him, and they picked it up. It wasn't in his car or at Gibbs' house. Unless they threw it out the car window, one of them has it. And Santori doesn't have a gun on him, does he?"

"No, he doesn't. I'll make sure she knows."

Ducky turned back to Santori's body, and Tim did the same. "Time of death?"

"Between 10:00 and 11:00 last night."

"And what time did you and Gibbs get to the house?"

"Approximately 10:15."

Tim turned around and let his eyes follow the trail Santori and the other man - Tim couldn't bring himself to say it was DelMar yet - had left behind as they'd fled. Broken branches, a bent fence, trampled grass. At the end of that trail, so close that Tim could see Fornell standing on the back porch, was Gibbs' house.

"He didn't even make it a block and a half," Tim observed. 

"It is fortunate that Jethro decided to check the basement rather than follow them." Ducky was standing behind him, just to his left, and staring in the same direction. "Of course, had Tony not been discovered when he was, he would have …" Ducky broke the sentence himself and cleared his throat. "But additionally, a man who could kill his partner so easily would most certainly have had no issues with killing a pursuer."

Fornell was talking to someone on the phone, and Tim watched him for a few seconds. "What else, Ducky?"

"There's quite a lot of blood," he answered. "On his clothes, hands, and the soles of his shoes. Too much to all be his."

"Tony's."

"I will of course have Abby test it, but I do not doubt that it is his, yes." 

Tim kept staring straight ahead, a thousand different things running through his mind. Despite his earlier thoughts, he couldn't get the what ifs and maybes, could have beens and almosts, to stop. What if Duncan hadn't left the camera room? What if he had reviewed the footage when he'd gotten back? What if Gibbs had gotten to the house earlier? Or later? What if he'd chased them out the door? What if Santori had been alive when they found him? What if DelMar had nothing to do with any of it?

"Timothy!"

Tim shook his head to clear it and blinked his eyes rapidly. "Ducky?"

"That is the third time I've said your name, and your phone was ringing." Ducky fixed him in place with a stern look. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah," he said dismissively. He reached into his pocket for his phone. "I'm fine."

"How much sleep did you get last night?" Tim didn't answer him as he pulled up his missed calls. "Any? Timothy?"

His phone started ringing again just as he saw who had tried to call him. Missing one call from Gibbs was bad enough; missing two was a death sentence. "Ducky, I …"

"You have got to sleep, my dear boy. I know you want to help Tony, but you can't do that if you're …"

"I've got to take this. I'm sorry."

That was the end of the discussion. Tim turned his back on Ducky and stepped away before he hit the button to answer the call. "Yeah, Boss?" Gibbs could be calling for any one of a hundred reasons, but there was only one that Tim was worried about. "Is Tony …?"

"You answer your damn phone when I call, McGee!" 

Tim sighed and mentally prepared himself for the onslaught that he knew was coming. "Sorry, Boss. We're at a crime scene. I was talking to Ducky, and I … I didn't hear it ring." The silence on the other end took him by surprise. Gibbs should have been ripping him a new one for not answering the first call. That he wasn't spoke volumes. 

Something was wrong.

"Is it Tony? Is he okay?"

A few more seconds passed in silence, and Tim's worry for his friend escalated with every beat of his heart. When Gibbs spoke again, it was as though he hadn't heard Tim's question at all.

"A crime scene? What crime scene?"

* * *

It took Gibbs and Tim less than five minutes to catch each other up on the events of their respective mornings. It turned out that Gibbs hadn't needed to rush to call him with the information about the parking lot, because Tim had known about it for a few hours. He'd just finished telling him about the incompetent security guard, Duncan, and Gibbs was seething.

"Deal with it, McGee."

"Already did."

"And?"

"And …" Gibbs could almost see Tim's nervous expression in his mind. "There's a formal complaint in my personnel file now."

"McGee!"

"Yeah, Boss?"

"Good job."

The door to Tony's room opened, and Dr. Marquardt walked out. She handed her jacket to one of the nurses following her, and then she turned and headed straight for Gibbs.

"Be here in two hours." It wasn't the most polite way to end a conversation, but it would have to do. Gibbs snapped the phone shut and looked up at Dr. Marquardt. "Doc? Is he …?"

She stalked right up to him, tucked her hair behind her ear, and looked him directly in the eye. "Was that your idea, Agent Gibbs?"

He'd known she was mad, but the amount of anger in her voice took him by surprise. "What?"

"That little stunt that Tony just pulled. Did you put him up to that?"

Gibbs bristled at the accusation, and he squared his shoulders as he faced her down. "I didn't put him up to anything," he said. "I would never do anything to hurt him."

"Oh, but you'll stand there and watch him do it to himself?" He couldn't argue with that, because she was right. "Did you not see how much pain he was in? Did it not occur to you that he might be pushing too hard? Or did you just not care?"

That he could argue with.

"Just who do you think you are, lady? Yes, I knew he was hurting, and I thought about calling you, but I decided not to."

"What stopped you?" she demanded. 

"He told me he didn't want any more meds, and I respected that. He's thirty-eight, not eight. It was his decision."

Her eyes narrowed; she apparently didn't like that answer. "I know you've got a job to do, Agent Gibbs, and I know you really want to get out there and catch those bad guys, but I will not allow you to risk Tony's health to do it."

"Hey!" He swallowed the rest of what he wanted to say, took a deep breath, and forced himself to calm down. "I take it you've never had someone try to kill you before."

Dr. Marquardt shook her head in response.

"Here's the thing, Doc. Those 'bad guys' you're talking about? They're the ones who did that to him. He's the only witness we've got, and he doesn't remember who they are." He saw the anger in her eyes starting to dissipate, so he kept going. "I'm not the only one who wants to catch them. For him, it's about finding out who hates him enough to hurt him that badly, and for me, it has a lot more to do with protecting Tony than it does with punishing some random sleazeballs. One of them is already dead, but the other one is still out there, and every minute he's free is another minute he can try again."

"But he doesn't remember," Dr. Marquardt protested. "And depending on what drugs they used on him and with those head injuries, he probably never will. All he's doing is hurting himself, and he's doing it for nothing."

"Not for nothing," Gibbs said. "Doing the impossible is one of DiNozzo's things. If he didn't push himself to do things he's not supposed to be able to do, he'd have been dead a dozen times over. And if you know of a way to make him stop pushing himself, or make him start paying attention to his own limitations, I'm all ears, Doc. Because I've been looking for one for eight years, and I haven't found it yet."

Dr. Marquardt sighed, and it was obvious that she'd calmed down quite a bit. She didn't look like she wanted to rip Gibbs' heart out, at any rate. 

"If he keeps it up this time, he just might kill himself."

Gibbs nodded slowly. He didn't want to hear it, but there was a part of him that had already known it. Whatever was wrong with Tony, he'd done it to himself. And Gibbs had let him.

"Is it pneumonia?"

"No." Her answer earned a relieved sigh in response. "That was a muscle spasm."

"I've never seen a muscle spasm that looked like that."

"That's because it wasn't just one muscle. It was a few dozen of them." Gibbs relaxed his stance and his shoulders, and Dr. Marquardt flashed one of her tired smiles. "It would have started out as one, probably the muscles under his ribs, and that made it hurt to breathe. Since he didn't have any pain relief, he just breathed shallower to avoid it. When he did that, he gave the other muscles room to do the same thing. The more muscles that knotted up, the more it hurt, the shallower he breathed, and the more room he gave them. It was a spiral."

"And if he does it again?"

"He can't," she insisted. "I'm not just saying that, either. He cannot keep doing this. He's got to breathe as deeply as he can, and he has to exhale completely. If he doesn't, he is going to get pneumonia. And with how badly his lungs are already damaged, and the fact that his blood isn't fully oxygenated yet, it won't take long before he finds himself back on that vent."

"But he's not on it now?"

"No, he's not. I used the Versed for two reasons: as a sedative and as a muscle relaxant. The morphine, of course, was for the pain. But I had to get those muscles to calm down, and that wasn't possible with him awake and hurting. By the time I got in there, he was so tense that his arms and legs were starting to cramp, too."

"How long will he be out?"

"Not long." Dr. Marquardt let her own shoulders slump slightly, and she turned back toward the nurse's station. Gibbs followed her. "I only gave him enough to keep him under for about twenty minutes. And when he wakes up, I'm want him up and walking within the hour. The nurses will help with that."

"That's fast," Gibbs observed.

"He can't stay in that bed the whole time he's here, or this will keep happening. I'm guessing Tony's not usually the 'lay around and do nothing' type?"

"No." Gibbs snorted a small laugh. "I think he sleeps, but other than naps at the office, I'm not sure when."

"And I'm assuming he works out?"

"He runs."

"So his muscles are accustomed to being used more than they are right now," she said. "We need to get him back to that as soon as possible. I'm going to start him on a low dose of potassium, but I don't think he'll need it for long. Once he's back up to his normal activity level, the spasms and cramps should go away on their own."

They'd reached the nurses' station just outside the door to Tony's room, and Dr. Marquardt reached across it as one of the nurses handed her jacket to her.

"I'll be back at 7:00. Dr. Simms will be checking on Tony throughout the day, and if anything happens, or if you need me specifically, he'll be able to reach me. Okay?"

"Yeah." Gibbs nodded as Dr. Marquardt put her jacket on. "And, Doc, I …"

"Don't worry about it. It's over, and luckily, he didn't damage himself seriously. Just don't let him do it again."

"Didn't I just say that I don't know how to stop him?"

"I may not know you very well, Agent Gibbs, but I have noticed that Tony listens to what you say." She grinned at him as she turned away. "If you make it clear that you don't want him to do it again, I don't think he will."

She walked toward the elevator, turning her shoulder slightly as she passed Agent Rivers, who was just returning from making his call to Fornell.

"Agent Gibbs," he said as he approached. "Agent Fornell said …"

"That they already know about the parking lot. I know." Rivers looked surprised, and Gibbs almost felt bad for the guy. He should have anticipated that Gibbs would call McGee while he was calling Fornell. The point of calling both wasn't getting information for themselves. It was making sure that both McGee and Fornell knew about the parking lot. Rivers should have known that, and he didn't. 

"You might make a good agent someday, Rivers," he said. "Today is not that day." He shook his head at the look of disappointment on the younger man's face. "Go home. Get some sleep. I want you back here at 8:00, and you'd better be rested."

Rivers' shoulders slumped as he walked away, and Gibbs shook his head again. Tony had been twice the agent Rivers was as a newly hired probie. Even McGee had been better. What had Tobias seen in the guy?

"Agent Gibbs?"

He turned toward the summons. One of the nurses that had helped Dr. Marquardt, Juanita, was holding an envelope out to him. "This was left for you at the desk." She handed it to him with a smile.

"Who left it?"

She shook her head. "No one seems to know. It was just sitting in the inbox with the internal mail that came up from downstairs."

"Thank you." He took it from her, and looked it over quickly. His name was on the outside of the envelope, but there was no other information. He opened it quickly and pulled out the piece of paper inside. He glanced up at Tony's door as he unfolded it, confused by the appearance of a dartboard there, hanging from the metal hook just above the room number.

That hadn't been there before.

He looked down at the handwritten note in his hand. It was short, anything but sweet, and it got right to the point.

_Bull's-eye on the Golden Boy._

He threw the note down on the desk, pulled his weapon, and bolted for Tony's room.


	10. Chapter 10

* * *

Tim watched the medical examiner's van pull away with Marco Santori's body. His eyes were focused on what was happening right in front of him, but his thoughts were a million miles away.

In reality, they were only five miles away, at George Washington University Hospital. Where Tony was awake and healing, but lying in a bed with no memory of what had happened to him or who had done it. Where Tim was going to have to look Tony in the eye and tell him that one of the men who attacked him was dead but that he hadn't been able to find any proof of who the other one was.  
He was going to have to tell Tony that he was failing him, and he wasn't quite sure how he was going to do that.

"McGee?"

Tim turned toward Fornell as he approached. An older man, short and squat, with thick glasses and grey hair that wasn't so much receding as it was completely gone, accompanied him.

"I'd like you to meet Gibbs' neighbor, Edgar Collins."

"Hello, Mr. Collins," Tim said tiredly. He looked at Fornell in confusion; he was sure there was a reason behind the introduction, but he couldn't think of what it might be. "It's nice to meet you."

"Edgar has a dog," Fornell went on. "A boxer named Mugsy. A very … regular … boxer named Mugsy."

McGee's eyes widened in sudden understanding, and he took a step forward. "What time did you walk Mugsy last night?"

"The same time I do every night," Mr. Collins answered. "I came outside at 8:15 and went back in at 8:30."

"And what happened while you were outside?" Fornell was actually smiling as he asked the question, and Tim couldn't stop the surge of hope that he felt wash over him.

"Well, I saw that blue Mustang pull up, which isn't all that strange. It belongs to that young man, the tall handsome one? He's Jethro's."

Tim nodded his head. "Tony," he said. "His name's Tony."

"That's right! Tony. He's a nice boy. He's over here two or three times a week, so I know his car. He always says 'hi' when he sees me, and he pets Mugsy. And Mugsy likes him, which is odd, because Mugsy doesn't like anyone. He doesn't even like Jethro. Come to think of it, not many people like Jethro, though I don't know why. He's a perfectly quiet and respectable neighbor."

Tim smiled, and Fornell chuckled.

"What about last night, Edgar?" Fornell asked. "Did Tony pet Mugsy last night?"

"Oh, no. I don't think he could have, even if he'd tried. Mugsy was mad last night, growling and barring his teeth and snapping."

"At Tony?"

"Well, no. I told you, Mugsy likes Tony. But he sure had his hackles up at the two men who were with him."

Tim's heart leapt into his throat.

Tony wasn't the only witness they had.

"They told me he was drunk and they were taking him home, which, I know he spends a lot of time at Jethro's house, but I also know he doesn't live there, so I don't know what they were talking about. But he couldn't stand up, I know that, too, because they were carrying him. He looked like he'd passed out, had his head down, didn't say 'hi' when I talked to him. And I kind of keep an eye on things, you know. Me and Mugsy. We know who belongs here and who doesn't. Tony belongs here. Those two men with him didn't."

"And you saw them?" Tim had to fight to contain the excitement he was starting to feel. Edgar Collins just might turn out to be the best nosy neighbor Gibbs could have asked for. "You saw their faces?"

"Well, of course I did, young man!" Mr. Collins sounded offended at the question. "They were standing no further from me than you are. And make no mistake about it. I might be old, and people think I'm senile, and my eyes aren't what they used to be, but I know what I saw. And I know Tony wasn't drunk."

"How do you know that?" Fornell looked surprised.

"Well, his head was bleeding, and I didn't think he did that to himself. But mainly, it was because I know what booze smells like," Mr. Collins said. "And I know that boy didn't smell like it."

"Did you call the police and report it?" Tim asked.

"I did. They told me they'd look into it, but they tell me that all the time, and I never see them here. I was going to tell Jethro when he got home, but I fell asleep watching the news." Mr. Collins looked regretful, as though he felt that he hadn't done enough even though he'd done everything he could have been expected to do. "When I woke up, the ambulance was here, and I thought that Jethro already knew what had happened. So I went to bed. Then I saw all the police cars this morning, and saw you on Jethro's porch, and thought that maybe I should say something."

Fornell smiled at McGee again, and he put his hand on Collins' arm. "Edgar and I are going to stop by the Hoover Building and look at some mug shots, Agent McGee. You can finish up here, right?"

"Yeah, I've got it." Tim reached out and grasped Mr. Collins' hand tightly and shook it. "Thank you, Mr. Collins. You and Mugsy are good neighbors. Gibbs is lucky to have you."

"Jethro's a good man," Mr. Collins said. "And that Tony, he's a good boy. I just hope they're all right."

Fornell led Mr. Collins to his car, and Tim watched after them for a few moments. Five minutes earlier, he'd been wallowing in the fact that all of their leads were running straight into a dead man, and he'd been convinced that without Tony's memory, they wouldn't be able to solve the case. But that had all changed. All they needed was for Edgar Collins to recognize Santori and DelMar from their mug shots, and they'd have the proof that they needed.

He turned back to the crime scene in front of him, feeling more hopeful than he had since Abby stopped him from pounding Duncan into the wall.

* * *

Gibbs ignored the shocked looks on the faces of the nurses as he passed them and barreled through Tony's door, shoulder first. He led the way with his weapon, clearing the hospital room just as he would any other potentially dangerous scene. He checked the closet, the bathroom, under the bed, in the cabinets and dresser drawers. Only after making certain that the entire room was empty and safe did he make his way over to the bed.

He placed his right hand on Tony's uninjured shoulder and closed his eyes. Tony's breathing was easy and even, his expression one of calm and comfort, and the beeping of the monitor indicated a strong and steady heartbeat.

_'He's okay. Nothing happened.'_

"Excuse me?"

He spun toward the door on instinct, raising his gun and leveling it at the person standing there as he did.

"Who are you?"

The mousey-looking man who stood just inside the door cleared his throat and pushed his glasses further up on his nose. It was the only sign of nervousness he showed. "I'm Dr. Simms. I assume you are Agent Gibbs?"

Gibbs lowered his weapon slowly and carefully.

"Dr. Marquardt explained Agent DiNozzo's situation to me. I know that this is a special case, and I understand your concerns about his safety." He didn't sound as mousey as he looked. There was a strength in his voice that his appearance didn't imply. "But I'm afraid that I am going to have to draw the line at you running around the hospital with …"

"He needs a new room." He'd dismissed the doctor as a threat, and he moved on to more important things.

Dr. Simms tipped his head. "I'm sorry?"

"A new room," Gibbs repeated. "He can't stay in this one. It's not safe."

"Agent Gibbs, I assure you that our security is …"

"Incapable of keeping the man who tried to kill my agent out of this hospital, off of this floor, or away from this room." He spoke slowly, clearly, and through clenched teeth. "Now, go out there and do whatever you need to do. Call Doc Marquardt. Fill out your paperwork. Just find him a new room."

"Agent Gibbs …"

"On a different floor." Gibbs finally holstered his gun, and he pulled his phone out of his pocket. "I'll be bringing my own people in to handle security. I'll need a list of the nurses who are assigned to the floor, and to Tony, with photo IDs for my people to check against."

"But that's not …"

"I'll need the security footage for the past half hour," he continued. "From the time I hit the call button until five minutes ago. I want the front door, the emergency entrance, all employee entrances, the elevators and stairwells, and every camera within fifty feet of this hallway. I might need more than that later, but that's good for a start. And I want all of the nurses and the person who brought up the mail available to be interviewed and fingerprinted."

"You can't just …"

"Don't tell me I need to get a warrant first." Gibbs stepped toward the doctor, but he didn't move far from Tony's bed. "We're on the same side here, Dr. Simms. My job is the same as yours – keep Tony alive and safe."

"Of course." Dr. Simms nodded his head slowly and turned away reluctantly. "I'll see what rooms we have available on the other floors, and I'll start the transfer."

"And everything else?"

"I'll speak to our head of security," Dr. Simms said as he pulled the door open. "I'm sure he'll be more than willing to coordinate with you."

Gibbs nodded briskly. As the doctor walked out into the hallway, he turned back to Tony.

"It can't ever be easy with you, can it, DiNozzo?"

He dialed his phone, and the call was picked up on the second ring. It was a vast improvement over the last time.

"Boss?"

"Get your ass to the hospital. Now."

* * *

"Gibbs has not yet called me to tell me about Tony."

Tim spun around, both surprised and reassured by the voice behind him.

"Ziva!" He smiled broadly at her. "How'd you get here so fast?"

She glanced down at her watch, and then up at him in mild confusion. "It has been twelve hours, McGee."

"Has it?" He checked the time for himself. 

It was almost 11:00. It had been fifteen hours since Tony was attacked. It had been thirteen hours since Gibbs and Ducky had found him. It had been nine hours since Gibbs had handed him the picture of Tony's back, seven hours since he and Abby had first watched the security video, three hours since Fornell had told him that Marco Santori was dead …

"Did you lose track of time?"

Tim shrugged. "I've been busy."

"I can imagine. You do not look as though you have slept."

A few moments passed in silence as Ziva appraised Tim silently and he pretended not to notice that she was doing it. It didn't take long before her attention made him uncomfortable, though, and he decided to divert it.

"How was your flight?"

"How is Tony?"

The two questions were spoken over one another.

Tim smiled softly and held up his hand, indicating that he'd answer Ziva's question first. It was the more important of the two, especially to her. She'd been on a plane for twelve hours, and the only information she had was the little bit that Tim had been able to give her on the phone.

"The doctor says he'll be fine." He guessed that was what she would want to hear first, and the way her face lit up at the news told him that he'd guessed correctly. "He's awake and talking, but he doesn't remember what happened. They're thinking he might get his memory back, though. So we're waiting for that."

"Where is Gibbs?"

"At the hospital with Tony."

Ziva tilted her head in confusion. "He is not running the investigation?"

"No," he said. "He handed it over to the FBI from the beginning. We're working with them, and for the time being, we report to Fornell."

"That does not sound like Gibbs."

"No, it doesn't. But this time, well, Gibbs can't be part of the investigation, and he wanted to make sure that …"

"For what reason?" He could hear the growing suspicion in her voice, and he remembered just how much information he had that she didn't.

"A lot has happened in the last twelve hours, Ziva. I'll bring you up to speed." His phone started to ring, and he pulled it out of his pocket. When he saw the name on the screen, his heart dropped into his feet. "Boss?"

"Get your ass to the hospital. Now."

"What happened? Is it Tony?" Ziva stepped forward when she heard the question, apprehension and concern clear in her eyes. "Is he …?"

"DelMar was here."

"What?! At the hospital? How do you …?"

"He was here, McGee." Gibbs sounded so certain that Tim had to remind himself that they still had no evidence of DelMar's involvement. "The son of a bitch was here."

* * *

Fornell scrubbed a hand through his short hair in frustration.

"And you're sure, Edgar?" he asked the older man.

Edgar Collins was sitting in front of the computer in Fornell's office at the J. Edgar Hoover Building, where he'd been sitting for the past hour. Fornell had put together a collection of mug shots for him to look at, and he'd gone through them all twice. The good news was that Edgar had identified two people from those pictures.

The bad news was that he'd picked out the two they already knew about.

"I've told you three times, young man." Edgar took his glasses off and wiped at them with the hem of his shirt. It was the fifth time he'd done it, and Fornell was starting to think it was a nervous habit. "The big, ugly one with the scars on his face was there. He was driving the car, and he pulled Tony out of the back seat, and he's not the one I talked to. None of these pictures are of the man I talked to."

Fornell reached out and hit the scroll button on the computer. He did it almost absent-mindedly, like he was just scrolling at random, but he did have a purpose.

"I still don't believe that Tony has ever been arrested, though. That just doesn't make any sense. He's a good boy, and Mugsy doesn't like criminals."

Fornell let his head fall forward slightly, but he didn't stop scrolling. Throwing DiNozzo's mug shot in there had been a last minute decision, one designed to make certain that Edgar actually knew him. That part of the plan had worked, because Edgar had identified DiNozzo the second his face appeared on the screen. He'd picked Santori out almost as quickly.

"None of these other men look familiar? Not at all?" Fornell slowed his scrolling speed as he neared the mug shot he was looking for. "You've never seen any of them before? Not this one?"

Fornell had no idea whose face was on the screen at that moment, but the question did pull Edgar's full attention back to the monitor, and the older man leaned in to study it closer.

"Or this one?"

Another random face, and a shake of Edgar's head.

"How about this guy?"

The guy in question was a mugger who'd gotten his kicks attacking people in national parks until Fornell had arrested him two years earlier. He was serving a ten year sentence. As expected, Edgar shook his head again.

"This man?"

It was old and out-of-date, but it was the most recent one they had. Fornell wished they had a newer one, but DelMar hadn't changed much in ten years. To anyone who had seen DelMar for any amount of time, or who had a reason to remember him, it would be enough. Even if Edgar couldn't match the entire face in his head to the one on the screen, there would have been enough similarity to pique his interest.

But there wasn't. There was nothing. Not even the slightest hint of recognition on Edgar's face.

He'd been less than a foot from DiNozzo and his would-be murderers. He'd been close enough to see the blood on DiNozzo's face and know that there was no alcohol on his breath. He'd had to hold his dog back from attacking them. He'd spoken to one of them. He'd picked Santori out without the slightest bit of hesitation.

"If I saw the man I talked to, I would tell you."

"I know you would, Edgar." Fornell patted him on the arm, drew in a deep breath, and then blew it out slowly. "Do you think you could describe him?" he asked. "To someone who could draw him?"

"Well, I don't know about the drawing him part," Edgar answered. "I never have understood how it is you agents do the things you do. But I can see his face in my head plain as day. If you've got someone who can draw what I say, then I can do it."

Fornell flashed Edgar a tight smile as he stood up and walked out of his office. He had no doubt that Edgar would describe their second suspect in almost perfect detail. It was obvious that the old man was a lot sharper than most people gave him credit for, and that he saw – and remembered – everything that went on in that neighborhood. It would be a matter of hours before they knew the face of the man who'd tried to kill DiNozzo and who had murdered Marco Santori. But Fornell knew with certainty that it wasn't going to be the face Gibbs expected it to be.

Stefano DelMar hadn't been there.

* * *

Tim's phone rang again just as he and Ziva were stepping off of the elevator.

Gibbs had told him about the note and the dartboard and had hung up immediately afterwards. He'd called him back once more just to give him Tony's new room number, but that conversation was equally as short.

"Well, at least Tony's getting better," he'd said after the second time Gibbs had hung up on him.

"How do you know that?"

"Gibbs is starting to act like Gibbs again."

The rest of the drive had been spent filling Ziva in on everything that had happened since Tony had first mentioned the possibility that the man or men who murdered Brewer and Strauss were still unidentified. He told her everything that he knew, and answered every question she'd asked. Then he'd called Abby to check on the status of the tests she was running on the evidence from the basement, and she promised she'd call him back the second she had anything.

Obviously, that second had arrived.

"Hey, Abby," he said. "I'm going to put you on speaker so you can tell Gibbs, too."

He saw Gibbs standing further down the hallway, right next to the door to Tony's room, talking to one of the doctors. Gibbs looked up, and Tim raised his hand in greeting. The doctor smiled at Tim and Ziva quickly before he said something to Gibbs, then turned and walked away.

"Hang on a minute," he said into the phone. "Boss, we …"

"Officer David." Gibbs' voice was a combination of irritated and confused, but if he felt any guilt about not having called her himself, he hid it well. "I thought you were in Tel Aviv."

"I was." Her words were short, clipped … angry. "Fortunately, at least one person thought I deserved to be told that someone attempted to torture my partner to death."

The look that Gibbs shot him could have melted ice and refrozen it again. At the same time. Tim glanced down at his feet and shrugged.

"Do not blame McGee," Ziva said. "I would have done the same."

"And you'd better not be grumpy that she's home," came Abby's voice through the speaker on Tim's phone. "Because we need her."

Gibbs took a breath and looked as though he were about to say something, but after one look at Tim and Ziva and a quick glance at the phone in Tim's hand, the aggravation fell from his face and he nodded. "All right. What have you got, Abs?"

* * *

Abby's briefing was short, and though she had quite a few results back, none of them provided any new information or insight.

Marco Santori had left fingerprints in and on Tony's car – on the steering wheel and the handles of both doors. The soles of Santori's shoes matched one of the two sets of bloody footprints left behind on Gibbs' floor. It would be several more hours before the DNA results were back, but the blood on Santori's clothes and shoes was A positive, the same blood type as Tony's. The evidence that had been collected from Tony by Dr. Marquardt's team was still being tested, but Ducky had found deep scratch marks on Santori's right arm that matched the size and shape of Tony's fingernails and rope burn on the palms of his hands.

Gibbs wasn't writing anything down, but Tim and Ziva were making careful note of every word Abby said. He glanced between them before speaking again.

"Did you find anything new, Abby? Anything we didn't already know?"

There had to be something. If all of the evidence led them to the dead man they already knew was involved, they'd never be able to prove that DelMar had anything to do with it.

He heard Abby sigh on the other end of the phone, and he could imagine the distressed and upset look on her face. "Two things," she said. "Neither is good."

He waited a few seconds for her to elaborate, and when she didn't, he prompted her.

"Well? Are you going to tell us?"

"The tox screen results are back on the blood from the basement floor."

There was another long pause, and it went on long enough that both Tim and Ziva looked at him. He shook his head at them. Abby wasn't just reluctant to tell them what she'd found; she didn't want to tell them at all.

"Abby," he said gently.

All three of them heard the shaky breath she drew, and they braced themselves for bad news.

"Rohypnol," she finally said. "And GHB."

"Both?" Tim was visibly upset by the news, and Gibbs shared the feeling. "Together?"

"Yeah."

"Then it does not matter how hard Tony tries," Ziva said. "He will never remember."

"No," Abby confirmed. "He might remember flashes, impressions, shadows … maybe sounds, feelings. But nothing else. From the second they put that needle in his neck … it's all gone."

Gibbs closed his eyes and rubbed his eyebrows with his hand. He'd been prepared to hear it – they'd known Tony had been drugged since Dr. Marquardt had told them hours before – but he hadn't expected them to have used two of the nastiest drugs on the street to do it. One of them, maybe. But not both.

"What else, Abs?"

The answer was more silence. As much as he usually enjoyed indulging Abby in her more emotional moments, he was finding himself quickly running out of patience for them.

"Abby!"

"The ballistics are back on the bullet that killed Marco Santori."

Gibbs started in surprise. "That's fast." He thought about that for a second, and he narrowed his eyes in suspicion. "That's too fast."

"Well, it matched the first weapon I ran it against, so …"

"Damn it!" Tim turned away as he cursed softly to himself.

"I should be saying 'good work, McGee'," Abby said. "But I don't think that's what you want to hear, is it?"

Gibbs had no idea what they were talking about, though it was clear from the look in Ziva's eyes that she did. "Explain, McGee."

"You're sure, Abby?" Tim asked.

"Positive."

"What are you talking about?" Gibbs demanded.

Tim huffed out a breath, and the effort it took for him to make himself look Gibbs in the eye was obvious. "It's Tony's," he said. Gibbs' gut churned at the news.

"Marco Santori was murdered with Tony's weapon."


	11. Chapter 11

* * *

"He has DiNozzo's gun?"

His gut wasn't churning; it was turning itself inside out and doing backflips.

Tim nodded slowly. "That's not all he has," he said. "We didn't find Tony's keys, either. Or his wallet. Or his badge."

Gibbs pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. It wasn't bad enough that DelMar had tortured Tony and left him for dead, was it? He'd just had to take it further. He'd stolen his gun and murdered someone with it. He'd kept the keys to his car and apartment. He'd taken off with his ID, his credit cards, his badge. 

He had access to Tony's whole life.

"What other evidence are you processing?" Ziva's question was directed at Abby, and Gibbs was grateful to her for getting the conversation back on track.

"Like I said, I'm still waiting on the DNA results – the blood in the basement, the skin under Tony's fingernails and the blood on Santori's clothes."

"All of which will most likely lead us to Marco Santori again." Ziva was as upset about the lack of forward progress as the rest of them were, and her frustration was obvious.

"Major Mass Spec is still chewing on the rope, but I don't think you're gonna like what he says, Gibbs."

"Why not?"

There was another pause, shorter than the ones that had come before, but still heavy. "I've looked at that rope a thousand different ways, under a hundred different magnifications, and it's not … it's the wrong mold." Abby sighed deeply. "It's not Stachybotrys chartarum."

"It's not the same rope used on Brewer and Strauss." Gibbs wasn't asking a question; he was confirming a fact.

"No," Abby answered. "It's not."

Gibbs glanced between Tim and Ziva again, and he shook his head almost imperceptibly. "What else have you got going?"

"I've still got the FBI's files on Azari to go through. If there's a link between DelMar and Santori, I'll find it."

"McGee's going to bring you a dartboard and a note to process, along with a few hours' worth of security video, the hospital's security logs, and fingerprints from the staff to use for exclusion." He heard Abby's sharp intake of breath through the speaker, but he didn't give her time to react any more. "Have you talked to Ducky?"

"No." Abby set the fact that he was sending her evidence from the hospital - and what that implied - aside, but Gibbs knew that it was only temporary. He was going to have to answer for not telling her that DelMar had been there, had been within feet of Tony. 

"Do you know where he stands?"

"When Jimmy brought up the evidence from Santori's body, he said Ducky was almost finished matching Tony's wounds to your ... to the tools when he got called out to the crime scene. If he's not done with it yet, he will be soon."

"And the profile?"

"He's starting it after he finishes the tools."

Gibbs opened his mouth to speak again, but Tim cut him off. "Let us know when you've got those results back, Abby, and tell Ducky to call either me or Fornell when he's done." Gibbs shot an angry glare in his direction, and Tim shrugged. 

"Will do, McGee."

Tim ended the call, and then he looked Gibbs in the eye. "Agent Fornell's rules, Boss, not mine. We can tell you what we get, but you can't be involved in the investigation. Remember?"

Gibbs took a deep breath and blew it out. Tim was right, and he knew it, but he didn't like it. 

"Ziva," he said, turning toward her. "Go in and sit with DiNozzo for a few minutes. McGee and I are going down to the security office."

Ziva shot him a look that said she didn't believe him, and he didn't blame her. It was true that he and McGee were about to have a conversation that he didn't want anyone else to be present for, but it was also true that someone had to stay with DiNozzo until the security detail got there. For a second, it looked as though she was going to press the issue, but she decided against it.

"Of course, Gibbs." 

She pushed Tony's door open and disappeared through it.

Gibbs spun toward Tim. His eyes were narrow, and he raised his index finger in front of the younger man's face.

"McGee, the next time I try to step up and take over any part of this investigation, you …" He pulled his finger into a loose fist, and then dropped his hand at his side. "… do exactly what you just did."

"What?" The confused, dumbfounded look on Tim's face almost made Gibbs smile. 

"You did the right thing. But they aren't Fornell's rules; they're mine. By the book. FBI's jurisdiction." He gave Tim a few seconds to let that sink in, and then nodded at him in confirmation. "Speaking of which, were is Fornell?"

Tim's whole face brightened. "That's the one piece of good news we do have," he said. "Fornell's at the Hoover Building with our witness."

For the first time in more than twelve hours, the churning worry and frustration in his stomach gave way to a bit of hope. "There's a witness?"

Tim nodded excitedly. "Your neighbor, Edgar Collins."

The hope collapsed, and Gibbs' shoulders sank with it.

"He was walking Mugsy when they pulled up last night. He saw them get out of the car with Tony, he talked to one of them, and he knows that …"

"Did you see Mugsy, McGee?"

The interruption took Tim by surprise, but he shook his head in answer to the question.

"Did Fornell?"

"I … I don't know. I think Mr. Collins came to see him at your house, so … Why does that matter?"

Gibbs heaved a sigh. "Because Mugsy's dead. He died three years ago."

"No." Tim stuttered and stammered, and he shook his head again. "No, that's not … That doesn't …. He saw them, Boss. He talked to them. He was standing no further from them than I am from you. They told him Tony was drunk and they were taking him home, but he knew that …"

"And what did he tell you about DiNozzo?"

"Um … that he knew Tony wasn't drunk because he had blood on his face and he didn't smell like alcohol. And he kept saying he's a nice boy and Mugsy likes him."

"Did he tell you DiNozzo's seventeen? Or that he's my son?"

The confusion in Tim's eyes had turned to disbelief. "Why would he tell me that?"

"Because that's what he thinks." Gibbs turned and walked to the nurses' station. He grabbed a piece of paper and a pen and started writing. "He lives with his niece, Carol. She'd be at work right now, but if the nurse gets there to give Edgar his afternoon meds, and he's not there …" He handed Tim the phone number he'd just written down. "You need to call her and tell her where he is. And then call Fornell and tell him to take him home."

Tim stared at the piece of paper in his hand. "But he saw …"

Gibbs turned to face him and locked eyes with him. "Think of the big picture here, McGee. Edgar's not competent to testify. Do you want to put an eighty-two-year-old dementia patient on the stand?"

Tim lifted his chin and stiffened his shoulders. "No. That's not right. That's not how we think, Boss. You've always said that our job is to find the evidence, and it's up to the DA to decide what he can and cannot use. And if Mr. Collins can tell us who pulled Tony out of his car and carried him into your house, then …"

"The defense attorney would have a field day with him. Leaving it up to the DA is a risk we can't take. Not this time."

* * *

"You look like a sheet, Tony."

Any other day, he'd have laughed and corrected her, but he had neither the energy nor the inclination. Besides, no matter which way he interpreted what she'd said, she was probably right.

"Losing a few liters of blood will do that to ya."

He couldn't finish a sentence without taking at least three breaths, and that was with the oxygen cannula in his nose. He couldn't talk much above a whisper, and he still sounded like a frog with bronchitis. His throat still hurt, but it wasn't as bad, and the morphine did make talking easier. 

Walking was a different story. The five minutes he'd spent walking around the room had been pure hell, and that was with the nurse keeping him steady and Gibbs standing at his side, ready to catch him if he fell. His left leg throbbed with every step, having his left arm strapped to his side threw his balance off, and dragging the IV pole with him everywhere he went was a giant pain in the ass.

As far as he was concerned, there were only three positive things about the whole walking experience. It meant that they were going to release him soon. It meant that the catheter was gone. And even though the only things covering his chest were bandages and his shoulder brace, the gown was gone, and he had pants on.

Ziva walked across the room slowly, and he got the distinct impression that she was nervous. That didn't sit well - Ziva David was never nervous, especially not around him.

"How are you feeling?"

_'Exhausted. Hurting. Dizzy. Useless. Kinda freaked out. Stupid. Weak. Pathetic. Scared.'_

"Fine." She smiled at him in a way that said she didn't believe him, and he shrugged his good shoulder. "What are you doing here?"

She moved around the room absently, looking at the cheap, cheesy paintings on the wall as if they were the most interesting things she'd ever seen.

"Someone tried to murder my partner. Where else would I be?"

"Tel Aviv."

She stopped her aimless wandering and walked to the chair he was sitting in. "Some things are more important than my vacation," she said. Then she knelt down in front of him and placed her hand gently on the Velcro that circled his left wrist. "You are more important than my vacation."

Her dark eyes bore into his, searching for the truth that he wasn't telling her, and he didn't like it. On a normal day, he'd have stared right back at her and dared her to find what she was looking for, but if he did that, she'd see it. His defenses were weak, he couldn't hide the frustration and pain and fear in his eyes, and he knew it.

He turned his head away.

"Do not hide from me, Tony."

"Not hiding." It was supposed to be a declaration filled with defiance and enough conviction to make her believe it. It was supposed to be a warning to her to back off, an indication that he was handling things on his own. It was supposed to be a way to put the mask back on and the defenses back up.

It wasn't even a complete sentence.

"Talk to me." Her voice was calm and even, and she hadn't removed her hand from his arm. "Tell me what you need."

What did he need? He needed to be able to walk more than five feet by himself without panting from exertion. He needed to see what was under the bandages on his wrists and chest. He needed the pain to go away so he could get rid of the painkillers and his brain could start working again. He needed to pull himself out of what he was feeling and get on with his life, and there was only one way to do that.

"I need to know."

"What do you need to know?"

"Everything. Hell … anything." He took a deep breath and forced himself to face her. "Remember last week? I asked you why one friend would withhold information from another?"

She nodded carefully. "I said that sometimes, it is best for everyone."

"You're wrong, Ziva." He shook his head slowly. "He's wrong. It's not best for me."

* * *

"You're telling me to ignore evidence?" 

They'd moved away from the nurses' station and Tony's door, and they were alone in the hallway. Tim was standing with his back straight and his head up, his hands loose at his sides and his eyes slightly narrowed. Gibbs was mildly surprised. He knew the kid had backbone, because he'd seen it before, but he never thought it would be used against him.

"What did you say, McGee?"

"You're telling me to ignore evidence," Tim repeated. "We need every lead we can get right now, and you're telling me to throw this one away."

"No, I'm telling you this one's no good and you need to find a better one."

Tim bristled. "And since when do we decide that?"

Gibbs stepped forward angrily. "Since we'll be letting the son of a bitch who tried to kill DiNozzo walk if we screw this up."

"And what are we doing if we ignore the evidence we need to arrest him to start with?" Tim lowered his voice, but he didn't relax his posture. "We need a name, Boss. We need a face. Tony can't give them to us, but Edgar Collins can. We need to take it."

"We know who did it." Gibbs turned to walk away again.

"Do we?" Tim wasn't ready to let it go. Gibbs would have been proud of him for standing his ground, if he hadn't been standing it against him. "Do we really? Where's our proof? Where's our evidence? You think it was Stefano DelMar, and I understand why, but we've got nothing. We've got a dead car thief who didn't wear gloves and a tall man with dark hair whose face we've never seen. That's it."

"Are you questioning my judgment?"

Tim didn't even think about the answer. "Yeah," he said with a nod of his head. "I don't like it but … I guess I am." He took a deep breath before continuing. "I understand what you're saying, and I'll tell Agent Fornell about Mr. Collins, but we have to work with him. If he says DelMar was there, or if he says he wasn't, either way, we have to follow the evidence where it leads us. We want to win this one, and we all need it to be over – especially Tony – but we can't start ignoring evidence or witnesses just because we don't like what they say. That's not how we do things."

Gibbs let the anger flow through him for a few seconds before he admitted to himself that Tim was right. He had sidelined himself because he didn't want to risk compromising the investigation. And even if he had wanted to be involved, Fornell wouldn't have let him. His home was the crime scene. His tools were the weapons. His name was carved into Tony's back. Anyone else would have been a suspect, and if Fornell were doing his job right, he'd have been one, too, if not for his alibi. He was way too close to what had happened, but he was a federal agent. He was used to being in charge, and it was hard to turn it off.

It had always been Tony's job to stand up to him when he was like that, and as much as it irritated him, he'd come to depend on it. No matter what they were investigating, if he lost his objectivity, Tony was always there to pull him up, pull him back, and pull him out of the water when he got in over his head. Until that moment, Gibbs had been so focused on his promise to Ducky, and on what Tony needed from him, that he hadn't stopped to think that he needed something, too. He needed Tony to call him out, talk him down, and make him back off.

Apparently, Tim had been paying attention, and he'd taken a page or two from Tony's book.

Gibbs nodded slowly and gave Tim a small, crooked grin. "DiNozzo would be proud."

Tim relaxed his shoulders and smiled.

* * *

Ziva moved her hand from Tony's wrist to his knee, and she settled back on her heels. "What has he told you?"

"Nothing." He leaned back in the chair as far as he could and tried to relax, but it wasn't doing much good. 

Ziva did her best to smile, but it didn't reassure him. "He only wished for your memories to return on their own."

Even his fuzzy, drug-addled brain caught the meaning of that. "Wished," he said. "Past tense. Something's changed."

"Yes." She was hesitating, reluctant to answer him, choosing every word carefully. "Abby tested your blood from the b … crime scene." That was almost a slip-up. He'd have to press her on that, if he could remember it. "She found Rohypnol and GHB."

"Oh." He looked down, watched Ziva squeeze his knee, and raised his head slowly. "Kinda hard to recall memories that were never written. Isn't it?"

"Tony …"

"He thinks I'm stupid."

"He does not."

"Stupid, or incompetent, or maybe just drugged out of my head." He'd spent a lot of time thinking about it. At least, he thought he had. And it was the thought that bothered him the most. "I don't know. But he thinks not telling me anything means …" He drew in a breath, a ragged one, and he felt the familiar twinge in his chest that told him his muscles were starting to protest again. "He thinks I don't notice. That I can't see it."

"Can't see what?"

"That I'm cut up like Rob Brewer was." He looked down as he gestured toward his arms and chest. "Exact same. Right down to the … screwdriver hole in my leg." He looked into her eyes, and that time, he didn't care what she saw. He wanted her to see it. He wanted someone to understand. "What does that have to do with me?" he asked. "Is this part of that? Does he think … does he think Stefano did this? Is that why he won't tell me?"

Ziva opened her mouth, but no words came out. She shrugged at him as she shook her head, not in denial, but in refusal to answer.

"Help me, Ziva. I need to know. Give me something. Please." His breathing was starting to speed up again, and he forced himself to concentrate on slowing it back down. "I don't even know who found me. Or where. Or how."

Seconds passed in silence as Tony tried to clear his head, tried to relax and breathe, and tried to study Ziva's face for some indication of what she was thinking. He didn't figure it out until she moved her hand again, from his knee to his right hand, and tightened her fingers around his.

"He found you."

He blinked at her in surprise. "Gibbs?"

She nodded her head slowly. "Yes. Ducky was with him, but it was Gibbs who found you."

"Gibbs saved my life?"

"He and Ducky did, yes."

"But that doesn't … why wouldn't he tell me?" It didn't make any sense. Why would Gibbs want to hide that? Unless it was more about where and how and … "Wait," he whispered. "Where?"

Ziva tightened her grip on his hand again, shifted back onto her knees, and moved closer to him. "In his basement."

"In his …" Tony closed his eyes as a horrible thought occurred to him. "Rob Brewer."

"What about him?" Ziva's voice was barely more than a whisper, and he was grateful to her for that. His head was pounding enough as it was.

"He was tortured with Jack Kale's tools." He drew another breath, one that shook more with emotion than pain. "And I was … with Gibbs' …?"

"Yes."

The first thought that popped into his head wasn't eloquent, but it summed everything up, and it got his point across. 

"Shit."


	12. Chapter 12

* * *

Gibbs walked through the door of Tony's room half an hour later. Ziva was sitting in the chair Tony had occupied when he'd left, and he glanced around the room quickly as she rose to her feet.

"Where's DiNozzo?"

"In the restroom." She answered as smoothly as she'd moved, and she kept her voice even and controlled. She didn't vocalize any of the irritation that he knew she felt toward him. "He said his eyeballs were gloating."

Gibbs smiled in spite of himself. "Floating," he corrected. "He's been given a lot of fluids. Did he have any trouble getting there?"

Ziva shook her head. "He was unsteady and moved very slowly, but he allowed me to assist him. The IV pole and oxygen got in his way a few times, but we managed."

Her voice hadn't changed, and to anyone who didn't know her, it would have seemed like a perfectly normal conversation. But he did know her, and he could see in her eyes all the things she wasn't saying. The disappointment, the hurt, the admonition … all the things he'd been seeing in everyone's eyes for the past sixteen hours. He stepped forward and opened his hands at his sides.

"Say it."

"Say what?"

He huffed and leaned his shoulders against the wall at his back. "Ducky, McGee, Abby, hell, even Fornell has had a swing at me over how badly I'm screwing this whole thing up. You might as well take one, too."

Ziva sighed and crossed her arms across her chest. "We are not enjoying this, Gibbs."

"Do you think I am?"

"Of course not." She moved closer to him, and then stopped and leaned against the windowsill. "We rely on you. All of us do. And from you, we take not only direction and guidance, but also strength. No matter what, when we need you, you are there." She crossed her arms and smiled tightly. "Perhaps it is time for us to repay the favor."

He tilted his head slightly. "So you don't think I'm screwing it up?"

"I did not say that."

He nodded. "I should have called you."

"Yes," she answered. "You should have. But McGee did, and I am here, and this is not about me."

He glanced at the bathroom door briefly before turning back to face her. He knew who it was about. She was less irritated with him about what he hadn't told her, but she was angry with him about what he hadn't told Tony. Knowing Ziva the way he did, he was certain that she'd taken steps to correct what she thought he'd done wrong. 

"What did you tell him?" He lowered his voice, unwilling to risk Tony overhearing him.

"I only answered the question he asked me." She was speaking as softly as he was, obviously just as aware of the danger of Tony hearing them.

"And what was that?"

"The identity of his savior."

His heart sank into his stomach, and he dropped his shoulders. "Ziva …"

"He had a right to know." Gibbs shook his head. "He deserved the opportunity to thank you. Surely you do not think that he will blame you for …"

"It wasn't about him blaming me." He lifted his chin and looked her in the eye. "It was about not compromising the investigation."

"By telling him who saved his life?" He could hear the disbelief in her voice, and he didn't blame her. He wasn't sure he believed himself anymore. "He is the victim, not an investigator. Telling him the truth would not have compromised anything."

Gibbs rubbed his forehead as he shook his head again.

"He believes you think him stupid and weak."

He looked up in surprise. "Why would he think that?"

"Because you refused to share with him even the basic details of what happened. And if he were any other victim, you would have told him without hesitation."

"He's not 'any other victim,' Ziva. He's Tony."

"I am aware of that. As is he." She pushed herself up from the windowsill and stood straight. "And he cannot understand why you would refuse to give him the same consideration you would give a stranger."

Gibbs closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, and sighed. "Ducky was right," he said softly.

"I do not know what Ducky said," Ziva said just as quietly. "But he often is." 

Gibbs pushed away from the wall and straightened his shoulders. "I'll fix it," he said. "One way or another."

"I would expect nothing less."

Gibbs nodded one last time. "I'm glad you're home, Ziver." And just like that, the conversation was over. "McGee's down in the security office getting the surveillance videos for the past two hours. Meet up with him and head back to the office."

"We will find him, Gibbs." Ziva squeezed his arm once as she moved past him. "I swear to you."

"I would expect nothing less."

Ziva shot him a quick smile, and then she walked out the door.

Gibbs closed his eyes and let his head fall back. He rolled his shoulders a few times, took a deep breath, blew it out, and turned toward the bathroom door.

"DiNozzo!" He stepped forward as he called out. "You fall in, or what?" 

There was no answer, so he tapped the door with his knuckles. "DiNozzo? You okay?"

Again, silence was the only response. "Hey, DiNozzo!" A hole opened up in the pit of his stomach, and he knocked harder. "Answer me or I'm breaking the door down."

Nothing.

"That's it. I'm coming in." He wrapped his hand around the knob and squared his shoulder against the door, prepared to ram into it if he needed to. He was surprised when the knob turned easily under his fingers, and he pushed the door open carefully. If Tony were on the floor behind it …

But Tony wasn't on the floor. He wasn't anywhere near the door. He also wasn't unconscious, bleeding, or otherwise unable to answer.

He was standing between the two mirrors in the room, leaning against the sink, slightly hunched over and using his right arm to hold himself steady. He'd turned off his oxygen and hooked the cannula over the top of the canister, and he'd removed his IVs. He'd also pulled most of the bandages from his chest and arms and piled them in the sink.

The large bandage that had covered his upper back was with them.

The straight, neat rows of sutures that crisscrossed his chest and the insides of his arms stood out in stark contrast to the paleness of his skin. The two deep wounds that circled his right wrist – he'd left his other arm strapped down and bandaged – looked better than they had the night before. But it was Tony's back, so easily readable in the mirror that both of them were staring at, that stopped Gibbs cold.

"DiNozzo …"

"I just wanted to know." Tony's voice was devoid of emotion, and he didn't turn away from the mirror or meet Gibbs' eyes in the reflection. "I mean, I knew my chest looked a lot like Brewer's, but I wanted to see for myself, ya know? Didn't figure it would be that hard. But damn, that one on my back … that was a bitch."

"Tony."

"Don't think I need answers anymore." Tony continued as though Gibbs hadn't said spoken. His voice was almost painful to listen to, broken and breathy. "I think I get it now. You don't think I'm stupid. You just couldn't think of a good way to say, 'Hey, DiNozzo, some psycho carved my name into your back.' But that's probably because there is no good way to say that, is there?"

"Tony, listen to me."

Tony shook his head. "I've been listening all day, Boss. Waiting for you to talk to me, to tell me something, anything. You haven't said a damn thing. Asked me if I was hurting, if I wanted pain meds, told me to breathe. But those don't really count." He paused to take a shaky, raspy breath, and he had to put more effort into it than he should have. There was a reason he was still dragging that oxygen tank around. "And I know this has got to be screwing with you, but …"

"Ya think, DiNozzo?" Gibbs fought the urge to move further into the small space, unwilling to force Tony into a corner. "You want me to tell you the truth? Okay." He took a deep breath of his own. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do right now. I don't know what I'm supposed to say or how I'm supposed to act. I'm trying, but this is all new to me, and I don't know what to do."

Tony closed his eyes and lowered his head. "That actually doesn't help."

Tony was shaking, and his right arm looked like it was about to buckle under the pressure. He was pale, and he looked ready to hit the floor out at any second. Gibbs stopped fighting with himself, stepped forward, and put his hand on Tony's arm.

"You need to get back in bed."

"Boss …" A thousand questions unasked, pleas unspoken and fears unvoiced. Wide, scared green eyes finally met his in the mirror.

"I'll tell you everything I know, Tony. But not until you're back in bed, you've got your oxygen back on, and a nurse reattaches your IV." Tony opened his mouth to argue, but Gibbs cut him off with a brisk shake of his head. "You're about to pass out."

"DiNozzos don't …"

"I've already caught you once." Gibbs paused, and Tony's eyes widened further in sudden understanding. "I don't know if my knees can take it again."

Tony nodded slowly and pushed himself back from the sink. Gibbs moved closer to him, put his left arm around Tony's lower back and wrapped his fingers around the younger man's upper arm. Slowly, carefully, he led him out of the bathroom and toward the bed.

He concentrated on walking, putting one foot in front of the other and making sure that Tony stayed on his feet long enough to get where they were going. He intentionally avoided looking at Tony's back, at the evidence of his responsibility for what had been done.

"Think that'll ... leave a scar?"

Tony barely had enough breath or energy to walk in a straight line, but he obviously thought he had enough to keep talking.

"I don't know." He would have shrugged if he hadn't known how much pain it would cause the man he supported. "It might."

"I guess it's ... not so bad. If it does." They'd reached the bed, and Gibbs turned them around. "I can think of ... worse tattoos to have. And if someone asks me ... who I work for ... I can always ..." Whatever else he was going to say was lost in a gasp of pain as Gibbs helped him sit and then lie down.

"You think this is funny, DiNozzo?" He carefully lifted Tony's feet onto the bed. 

"Not … laughing."

"Yeah, well, neither am I. Someone tried to kill you." He pressed the call button and returned to the bathroom for the IV pole and oxygen canister. "Someone choked you out, drugged you, kidnapped you, and tortured you. And yes, DiNozzo, some psycho carved my name into your back. Someone hates me enough to …"

"Us."

"What?" He put the oxygen on the floor next to the bed and started to untangle the tubing.

"They did it in … your house." Tony's voice was weaker than it had been only seconds before. He was exhausted, drained, and if the crease between his eyebrows was anything to go by, in a lot of pain. "But they did it ... to me."

Gibbs didn't visibly react to Tony's words, but that didn't stop them from stabbing him in the heart. After everything he'd said, after everything he'd thought, about needing to protect Tony – from the truth, from the pain, from the man who'd tried to kill him – how had he missed something so obvious?

He hooked the cannula around Tony's ears, positioned it in his nose, and turned the oxygen back on. Tony took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and his head sank deeper into the pillow.

"Someone ... really hates ... us."

* * *

"You're looking for a man consumed by hatred," Ducky said. "For both of them."

Ducky had called everyone to autopsy only moments after McGee and Ziva returned from the hospital. Fornell joined them less than ten minutes later, after calling Edgar Collins' niece to let her know where her uncle was. They were assembled in a loose semi-circle around Ducky's whiteboard, which was covered in writing, boxes, and lines that connected everything that he had learned about their unidentified suspect.

Fornell snorted, and everyone turned toward him. "That narrows our suspect pool down to everyone who's ever met them."

Ducky shook his head. "Not this level of hatred. This isn't just anger; this is deep and all consuming. Think Charles Sterling."

"Chip." Abby's voice dripped with anger and the closest thing to hatred that she could feel.

"It can't be Sterling," Fornell said. "He's still in the pen, and he's got at least seven more years to serve."

"It couldn't be him, anyway." McGee glanced around the room before focusing his attention on the whiteboard again. "He hated Tony, but he didn't hate Gibbs."

"There is that, Timothy." Ducky turned back to the board, too. "There is also the fact that this person's hatred is fresh. And while we can't eliminate the possibility that this is someone they've known for a while, I believe we should focus on people they've met only recently."

"How recently?" Director Vance had invited himself to the gathering, but no one minded. He'd been angry enough that someone had tried to kill one of his agents. The fact that they'd taken Tony from his parking lot made him livid. He'd sworn to Tim that he'd be given anything he needed – any resource, any warrant, any intel. Finding out who'd tried to kill Tony had become Vance's number one priority.

"Within the past week and a half to two weeks."

"Rob Brewer." Ziva leaned against the table that Tim and Abby were sitting on. "He recreated Brewer's torture on Tony."

"But not Strauss'," McGee added.

"Yes." Ducky nodded and pointed to one of the boxes he'd drawn. "This tells us that …"

"Whatever happened to make him hate them happened during the Brewer investigation." Abby's voice was even harder than it had been when she said Chip's name. "Before Strauss was even dead."

Another nod from Ducky. "He's fixated on that event. He's trying to make them pay for something he imagines they've done to him. Something that happened in the twenty-four hours between the discovery of Lance Corporal Brewer's body and the murder of PFC Strauss."

Fornell tilted his head. "It's DiNozzo who's caught the brunt of it," he pointed out. "Can we assume that means DiNozzo is his main focus?"

"No. Absolutely not. He hates them equally."

"But he hasn't laid a hand on Gibbs." Vance stepped forward slightly. "And it's not like he hasn't had the opportunity. If this man wanted them both dead, then he wouldn't have run. He'd have forced a confrontation with Gibbs last night."

"That is true." Ducky gestured toward the board again. "And that is why I also believe that as much as this person hates Jethro, he's also afraid of him."

"Afraid?" Tim didn't know why he was surprised at that. It wasn't exactly a new or rare occurrence.

"Something has convinced him that Jethro is, for lack of a better term, untouchable. Rather than taking his revenge on him directly or physically, as he has done to Anthony, he is focused on hurting him mentally and emotionally."

"By hurting Tony." Abby's breath hitched in her throat, and Tim put his hand on hers in comfort.

"And as Jethro's episode in the waiting room proves, it's a successful tactic." Ducky turned his back to the whiteboard and sighed. "My initial thought was that Gibbs' involvement was secondary, that his role in Anthony's torture was merely as a tool to increase feelings of isolation and hopelessness. Since then, we have learned things that have forced me to rethink that assessment."

"Rethink it how?" Fornell asked.

"They are both victims, and they are both weapons. They were used to torture each other, and they will continue to be until he is caught. He will not stop until Jethro is destroyed." Ducky took a deep breath before continuing. "And Tony is dead."

* * *

Tony turned his head when the door opened. He put his fingers to his lips to silence the new arrival, and then waved him into the room.

Gibbs was in the chair in the corner, with his head back, his hands in his lap, and feet flat on the floor. He'd been there for nearly an hour, and he'd been snoring softly almost the whole time. True to his word, he'd waited until the nurse had properly scolded Tony for taking his IV out and restarted it. Then he'd told him everything he knew, everything he suspected, and everything he thought. The conversation had taken a lot out of them both, but it seemed to have taken more out of Gibbs than it should have.

Tony had a sneaking suspicion that there was something else going on with Gibbs, that something else was wrong, something he still wasn't telling him. The fact that Gibbs had fallen asleep within moments of sitting down was just more proof of that. A healthy Gibbs could stay awake for days at a time, if he felt the need.

"Hey, DiNozzo. How're you feeling?"

Tony would have laughed, but he didn't want to risk waking Gibbs up. 

"Just peachy, Rivers." Keeping his voice down wasn't difficult, since he could barely talk above a whisper. "You?"

Rivers had the good sense to look ashamed. "Okay, yeah. Dumb question." He looked over at Gibbs' sleeping form.

"What are you doing here?"

Rivers turned back to face him and smiled. "Babysitting you."

Tony smiled back and raised his eyebrows. "Really?"

Rivers nodded. "Agent Gibbs told me to be back at 8:00, so I …"

"You're a little early." Tony looked up at the clock. "It's not even 6:30 yet."

"Yeah, I know." He glanced across his shoulder again, and Tony got the impression that he was nervous. "I just really don't want to piss your boss off again."

"Again?"

"He threatened to shoot me last night."

Tony did chuckle at that, though it sounded more like a weak, hacking cough than a laugh. "He threatens to shoot me all the time." He smiled. "I think it means he likes you."

"No," Rivers protested, shaking his head. "He doesn't like me. And he scares the hell out of me."

"He has that effect on people."

* * *

"Where does that leave Stefano DelMar?" It was Fornell who finally broke the heavy silence that had fallen over autopsy.

"All but eliminated," Ducky said. "Yes, he did try to kill Anthony ten years ago, but I do not think he's in any way involved with what's happening right now. Our suspect's hatred is newer, explosive and violent. DelMar's, if it even still exists, has been simmering for ten years. A longstanding hatred like that would result in a slower, calmer, and more controlled outlet. It wouldn't explode like this."

"We also have no proof that he even knows DiNozzo works here," Fornell added. "And why would he hate Gibbs? Between the two of us, if he was going to hate anyone, it would be me. And Azari's death hasn't exactly been bad for DelMar's career."

"Have you narrowed it down further, Doctor Mallard?" Everyone turned toward Vance at the question, and then to Ducky for the answer.

"I believe I have, Director."

"And if I'm following you correctly, I'm not going to like what you're about to say, am I?"

"No, you're not." Ducky shook his head slowly and sadly. "No one will."

"What is it, Ducky?" Ziva asked. "What else have you found?"

Ducky took another deep breath and addressed everyone with his answer. "There is an overall pattern here, a snapshot, if you will, of Tony's attacker. It is someone whose hatred has developed within the past two weeks. He is intelligent, almost methodical, but at times, his anger is so extreme that it leads him to make mistakes – showing himself on the security camera, talking to Edgar Collins, taking Tony to Jethro's house without knowing when he would be home. He has the ability to convince someone like Marco Santori to help him, which means he has contacts within Azari's organization. He knows details about Lance Corporal Brewer's death that were never released to the press. He knows enough to come close to almost duplicating it with Tony. He knew there was mold on the rope, and he knew Brewer was tortured with his friend's tools. He was able to move around the Yard without arousing suspicion. He knew one of our gates was damaged, and he knew which one."

Ziva closed her eyes, and Tim dropped his head.

"Oh, Ducky." There were no tears in Abby's eyes, but they were obvious in her voice. "No."

"You're telling me that he works here." Vance's voice was as hard and cold as the look in his eyes. "One of my people is doing this."

Ducky didn't answer, but instead, he turned to Tim.

"Timothy, what time did Anthony leave the squad room last night?"

Tim lifted his head and tightened the already white-knuckled grip he had on the edge of the table. "The timestamp on the security footage said 20:04."

"And what time did the call about the non-existent breach of the front gate come in to Officer Duncan?"

"Twenty-oh … damn it. 20:05. I should have thought, should have realized …"

"It is not the first thing that comes to mind." Ziva put her hand on his back and leaned closer to him. "We have been conditioned to trust each other, McGee. We have to trust each other. If we don't, we cannot do our jobs."

"And if we do," Abby interrupted, "stuff like this happens!"

"Abigail …"

"Doctor, I don't understand." Every head in the room turned toward the previously silent Palmer. "What does that tell us? What does that prove?"

"The phone call was a diversion." It was Fornell who answered him. "They used that phone call to pull the security guards out of the monitor room so they could jump DiNozzo without being seen in real-time. The only way they could have timed that phone call so perfectly is if they were …"

"Wait, they were watching him?" Palmer's eyes were impossibly wide. "Watching him here? In the squad room?"

Tim straightened his back. "And Tony knew it, too." 

"What?" Fornell and Vance asked the question in unison. 

"He felt it. He kept looking behind him, and he told me he couldn't… that he thought …" He shook his head and closed his eyes. "I told him he was imagining things."

"What about the hospital? Is it safe?"

"Of course he's safe!" Abby sounded offended that Palmer had even asked. "He's with Gibbs."

"But the guy was there." Palmer had obviously caught up with Ducky's thought process, and he was following it to its logical conclusion. "He was right outside Tony's door."

"We are all aware of that, Palmer," Ziva said.

"But are you all aware that Tony's name isn't on any of the patient registries?" Tim didn't know about anyone else, but he hadn't known that. "I tried to find his room number earlier today, so I could send him a Get Well present. The hospital told me there was no one registered under that name. I even identified myself as an NCIS employee, but it didn't make a difference. His name's not on that list."

"So the only way this guy could've known what room DiNozzo was in …" Fornell said.

"He's found himself an open door," Vance said. "He's hacked the hospital's security feed, or he's got another source inside." He turned on his heel and walked out of the room. Just before the doors closed behind him, he called back over his shoulder. 

"The son of a bitch is still watching him."

* * *

"Rivers. What the hell are you doing in here?"

Tony didn't look up from the cards in his left hand, but he did smile. "He's babysitting me. Can't you tell?"

Gibbs pushed himself out of the chair, rolled his shoulders, and stepped forward. Tony had raised the head of the bed, and Bruce Rivers was sitting on the other end. There were two piles of cards between them, and they each held several in their hands. 

"Funny. Looks to me like he's playing Gin."

"Canasta, actually," Tony said. "But close enough."

In comparison to DiNozzo, who looked to be enjoying the exchange, Rivers expression was one of absolute terror. Gibbs decided to work that to his advantage. He changed direction and headed straight for the FBI agent.

"You are supposed to be on the other side of that door," he said. "Your job is to protect this room, not to hang out in it."

"Yes, s … Agent … Agent Gibbs." Rivers dropped his cards and jumped off the bed.

"He can see the door just as well from in here as he can from out there. If anyone comes in, he can …"

"He's supposed to stop them before they get through the door. That's the point." Gibbs shook his head in disbelief. "If I could do it without aggravating that concussion, I'd headslap you so hard right now. You're distracting your own protection detail, DiNozzo!"

Tony leaned back against the head of the bed and smiled again. "I was bored, and you were asleep. Besides, what are the odds that anything's going to happen anyway? It's a hospital. There's security everywhere."

Gibbs felt all the blood rush out of his face, and the fact that Tony's eyebrows shot up and he sat back up was evidence that it had been visible, too.

"Right, Boss? I mean, it's not like he … no. No, that's not …" Gibbs wanted to interrupt him, wanted to tell him he was wrong, but he couldn't. "He was here?"

Tony's voice was a combination of disbelief, fear, and betrayal. The last was directed solely at Gibbs.

Gibbs glanced at Rivers and jerked his head in the direction of the door. Thankfully, he got the hint, and he didn't need to be told again. Rivers made a hasty, and silent, exit.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

Gibbs shook his head and moved closer to the bed. "I wasn't withholding information from you. I honestly thought you knew why you changed rooms. I thought Dr. Simms told you."

"So he was here. And now you've got Rivers standing outside my door looking for … who, exactly? Stefano?"

"It's not just Rivers. There's an entire network of agents in this building, Tony. One at every entrance, one at every elevator on the first floor, one at every elevator on this floor, one at each end of this hallway, and two at the nurses' station. If DelMar shows his face, yes, he'll be arrested on sight. But it doesn't matter who it is. He's not getting in here."

"How are they going to stop him if they don't know who he is?"

"Because no one – and I do mean no one – is getting within a hundred feet of this room without my say-so."

"But what if …?"

"Tony, look at me." Gibbs waited until he was sure that he had the younger man's undivided attention before speaking again. "Even if every single one of those agents messes up, if all of them let someone pass that isn't supposed to, if all else fails …" He took a deep breath. 

"I'm right here, Tony. And I'm not going anywhere. I've got your six, okay?"

Tony nodded, slowly but not reluctantly. The fear that had filled his eyes hadn't vanished entirely, but it had faded somewhat.

"Okay." Gibbs sat down next to Tony's legs, in the spot that Rivers had vacated, and turned until he was facing the head of the bed.

"I'm not a Canasta man." He picked the cards up from the table and started shuffling them. "How does five-card stud sound instead?"


	13. Chapter 13

* * *

"I see nothing that isn't good." 

Dr. Marquardt delivered the news with the brightest smile Gibbs had seen on her face since he'd met her. "Your chest x-rays look great, Tony. Your lungs are clear, all of the fluid has moved away from your heart, and your blood pressure is holding steady at 103/62. I wouldn't mind that being a bit higher, but I'm not going to complain. Your blood volume is just over 90%, so we're going to discontinue all of the fluids and allow your body to finish replenishing that on its own. Now, before that shot I just gave you kicks in, how's your pain?"

Tony opened his mouth to answer her, but Gibbs caught his eye and shook his head.

"Tell her the truth, DiNozzo."

Tony sighed. "My shoulder hurts a little bit."

"Dislocated shoulders will do that." She palpitated the injury carefully. "How badly does it hurt? On a scale of one to ten?"

"Um … like a two." Tony grimaced as Dr. Marquardt pressed on a particularly sensitive spot. "Maybe a four, or …" She pushed again, right above the joint, and Tony went white. "Nine!" 

Dr. Marquardt pulled her hands away, and Tony sank back into his pillow.

"Ow." He lifted his right hand and gently rubbed his shoulder. "What'd ya do that for?"

Gibbs smirked. "Got the truth out of you, didn't she?"

"Rude," Tony muttered.

Dr. Marquardt smiled again. "I'm going to order an MRI, just to be safe. I don't think there's any serious ligament or bone damage, but now that the swelling's gone down some, I want to get a clearer look at it. Either way, you're keeping that brace on for at least a week, and you'll be in a sling for a few weeks after that. If you try to use that arm for anything other than physical therapy before I release you, you're going to aggravate it, and you'll run the risk of messing it up permanently. Understood?"

"Got it. Don't use the shoulder."

Dr. Marquardt tilted her head and looked slightly confused. "Believe me, you're not going to want to. If you think it hurts now … anyway, it shouldn’t be that hard to remember."

Tony's attention was wandering rapidly. He was moving the fingers on his right hand up and down and staring at them in near-fascination. Dr. Marquardt looked even more confused than before, and Gibbs swallowed the urge to smile.

Dr. Marquardt cleared her throat. "So, for now, if no one's pushing on it, the morphine keeps the pain under control?"

"Morphine's great!" The grin on Tony's face was almost more than Gibbs could handle. He didn't laugh, but he did allow himself a small smile. "Don't know why I say I don't want it. Because I do. Because it's awesome."

Gibbs coughed.

The confusion in Dr. Marquardt's eyes had turned to alarm, and she glanced across the bed. "Agent Gibbs?"

"Painkillers." He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead before he looked back at her. "This is why he doesn't like painkillers. They make him … loopy."

"He's been on a morphine drip all day. He hasn't been like this, has he?"

Gibbs shook his head.

"Needles are worse." Tony's voice was still dreamy-sounding, but it was obvious that he was trying to follow their conversation. "Don't like needles." Gibbs and Dr. Marquardt turned to face him. He lifted his hand and shook his finger at them. "Needles are worse."

Dr. Marquardt nodded in understanding. "Injections hit you harder than a drip does. That makes sense."

"Yeah. I do that sometimes."

Gibbs cleared his throat to pull Dr. Marquardt's attention back to him. "So, what are we looking at, Doc?"

She nodded quickly and got back on topic. "I'll make the final decision after I see his MRI, but unless something really unexpected comes up between now and morning, I'm going to be releasing him after breakfast."

Gibbs closed his eyes and shook his head. Dr. Marquardt picked up on his thoughts immediately.

"Agent Gibbs, I know that you don't …"

"Release me where?"

"Home." She looked down at Tony and smiled. 

The goofy grin vanished. "No," he whispered. "I can't. Can't go home." He grabbed Gibbs' arm and pulled himself up from the bed. "Boss, I can't …"

"Calm down before you hurt yourself, DiNozzo."

"Why can't he go home?"

Gibbs looked across the bed at Dr. Marquardt. "The guy who did this … he took off with DiNozzo's ID and keys."

"Oh. I didn't realize …"

"Took my gun, too," Tony put in. "I can't even shoot him."

Gibbs opened his mouth to tell Tony that he wasn't going to be shooting anyone, but Tony kept talking.

"I can go to your place, Boss. That's always … oh. Wait. I can't go there, either, can I?"

Gibbs shook his head again. "Fornell hasn't released the crime scene yet, so no. We can't go there."

"So where am I gonna …?"

"We're both staying at Ducky's."

Tony's eyes lit up again. "Oh, Ducky's. That'll be awesome." The crooked, dopey grin was back. "I love being an Italian gigolo furniture mover."

Dr. Marquardt looked to Gibbs for an explanation, but he only shrugged. "Long story."

She turned back to Tony. "Okay. Now that it's all settled where you're going to be staying after you're released, I'm going to go order that MRI. I'll check on you a few more times overnight, but you should try to get some sleep. You're going to need it."

"Sure," Tony murmured as he settled back into his pillow. "Go to sleep. So a nurse can wake me up. To tell me to go to sleep. So another nurse can wake me up."

Dr. Marquardt grinned as she walked around the bed and toward the door.

"I'll be right back," Gibbs said. "You good?"

"Yep." Tony yawned and closed his eyes. "I'm sleeping."

Gibbs turned and followed Dr. Marquardt across the room. He caught up to her just as she opened the door, and he reached out to hold it open for her. They stepped into the hallway, and she turned to face him as the door closed behind them.

"I know what you're going to say, Agent Gibbs. And the answer is no."

Rivers was standing off to the side, doing his best to pretend that he wasn't eavesdropping on the conversation. Gibbs pointed at him and then at the hallway around the corner. Rivers dropped his head and shoulders and walked away.

"I don't think you understand, Doc."

"No, I do understand. I do. Dr. Simms told me about the excitement this afternoon. I know what happened, and I know how concerned you are about Tony's safety. I also know you're about to ask me to keep him here until you catch the man who tried to kill him."

"It's the safest place," Gibbs said. "We can keep it locked down, and we can …"

"That's part of the problem, Agent Gibbs," Dr. Marquardt interrupted. "You can't keep it locked down. This is a hospital, not a prison or a safe house. Do you know how long it took me to get upstairs tonight? How many times I got stopped? How many people refused to let me go where I needed to be until they saw my identification?"

Gibbs nodded, both in answer and in satisfaction that the agents he'd assigned to the security detail were doing their jobs right.

"What if I'd been responding to an emergency?"

He hadn't thought of it quite like that. 

"What if someone was having a heart attack? What if one of my patients coded? What if it was Tony, and I was downstairs, and I couldn't get to him because one of your guards, following your orders, refused to let me come up?"

Gibbs sighed, closed his eyes, and rubbed his temple.

"I wish I could help you. I really do. There's nothing I care about more than the health and safety of my patients, and believe me, the last thing I want is Tony ending up in my OR again because this guy comes back. But there are 400 patients in this hospital, and I have to think about their health and safety, too. Even ignoring the fact that there was a murderer walking my halls this afternoon, Tony's presence here is a risk."

Gibbs' eyes shot open, and Dr. Marquardt raised her hand.

"If he was still in real medical danger, I'd keep him. But he's not. And I'm sorry, Agent Gibbs, but I can't justify it. Those guards might be protecting him, but they're not doing much for the other patients and their loved ones. And if, God forbid, something were to happen here, what should I say to the families of the innocent people who got caught in the crossfire?"

"His health might not be in danger out there," Gibbs forced out through clenched teeth. "But his life sure as hell is. Does that not matter?"

"I have 400 other people to worry about, so I'm going to trust you to take care of him." Dr. Marquardt was keeping her voice low and steady, but it was clear from the look in her eyes that the conversation was upsetting her. "If something goes wrong and he gets hurt again, or if he starts having trouble breathing or having chest pains, you bring him back to me. But unless and until that happens, he's out of here in the morning."

"Doc, listen to me …"

"No." She shook her head and stepped away. "Because this decision is hard enough, and I'm not going to let you make it any harder. I can't help you. I'm sorry."

"Doc, please."

She changed direction quickly and walked back toward him. "You keep saying that it's your job to protect him, right? So do it." She leaned forward and lowered her voice. "Do your job, Agent Gibbs, and I won't have to do mine."

* * *

"So what are you telling me here, Charlie?" Leon Vance pulled his car into the parking lot at George Washington University hospital. "Can you help me out or not?"

"I can't give you DelMar, Leon."

Vance turned the car off and leaned back in his seat. "You're the director of the FBI," he said into the phone. "I doubt there's anyone you can't give me."

"Look, I get what you're saying. And if this had happened to one of my people, I'd be just as pissed as you are. But I can't give you an innocent man, and Stefano DelMar is innocent."

"How can you be so sure of that?"

"Because he's been in a safe house since Saturday morning. That's how."

"A safe house? Like the one Jack Kale was supposed to be in the day my people found him in Michael Strauss' apartment?"

A long-suffering sigh sounded in Leon's ear. "Okay, yes. That's a fair point. But he's in Virginia, Leon. And he hasn't been alone for more than fifteen minutes in the past four days. There's no way he could have even gotten out of the house without it being noticed, let alone get all the way back to D.C., spend a couple of hours kidnapping and torturing your man, kill Marco Santori, and hang around the hospital today."

Leon pinched the bridge of his nose. Ducky had, for all intents and purposes, eliminated DelMar as a suspect in the attack on NCIS Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo, but there was still the matter of the ten-year-old, unprosecuted attempted murder of Baltimore detective Tony DiNozzo. Nothing could change the fact that he had to face Gibbs, and nothing could change the fact that he had to tell him that someone in his agency – under his command, under his roof – wanted DiNozzo dead. But he'd have much preferred to preface that conversation with, 'We have Stefano DelMar.' 

"So why is the newly-crowned king of D.C. organized crime in your safe house?"

"Because someone's started offing Azari's higher-ups, and he got scared. He came to us Friday afternoon, right after the second body was found. He knows that the media are attributing the murders to him, and he's fine with that. He just doesn't want to be the next dead mafia guy on the news."

Leon took a deep breath and closed his eyes. "You know he's tried to kill DiNozzo before, right?"

"No." He opened his eyes and prepared to launch into the story McGee had told him, but he never got the chance. "I know that we fed DiNozzo and the Baltimore PD a story about Stefano trying to kill him, and I know that they bought it. But he didn't do it."

"What?"

"The guy who tried to bash DiNozzo's brains in in Baltimore was a kid named Benjamin Rossi. Stefano thought DiNozzo was a half-starved nineteen-year-old homeless kid named Tony Pagano. He found him in an alley, took him to Macaluso, and always felt responsible for him. Hell, even after finding out he was a cop, Stefano still looked out for him. It was Stefano who stopped Rossi and who called the cops and the ambulance. Stefano didn't try to kill DiNozzo that night; he saved his life."

Leon shook his head. "Then why does DiNozzo think …?"

"Because he doesn't remember what happened, and that's what we told him. Rossi's fingerprints and DiNozzo's blood were all over that pipe. Stefano never touched it."

"So where is this Benjamin Rossi?"

"He went down with Macaluso. He's in prison, and he's never getting out. You can take my word for that. As far as Stefano goes, Leon … the night Rossi tried to kill DiNozzo, after the raid was over and everyone had been arrested, Stefano asked for me. I was working organized crime back then, and he knew me. He was seventeen years old, he'd just witnessed an attempted murder, and he was scared. He was the one who brought DiNozzo to Macaluso in the first place, so he was in a really dangerous position. He needed a cover story that would sound good to Macaluso, and we needed information that he had, so we worked a deal. He's been a CI for ten years."

Vance was dumbfounded. Everything they thought they knew about DelMar was a lie cooked up by the FBI to protect one of their assets?

"Why hasn't Fornell seen fit to tell us any of this?"

"Because he doesn't know."

Vance narrowed his eyes in anger, though he knew the man he was talking to couldn't see it. "You had an informant inside an organization that one of your men has been investigating for twenty-five years, and you didn't think you should share that fact with him?"

"Stefano's role was never to feed us information on Azari. It was to feed us information on the other organizations that Azari had relationships with. Fornell wasn't part of the larger investigation. There was no reason for him to be told."

Vance shook his head in disbelief, but he didn't say a word.

"I want to help you find this guy, Leon. I do. If there's any way that I can help, I will, and you should know that. You've already got Fornell and his team, and I've got my best artist working with your witness. DiNozzo may be a cocky, annoying son of a bitch, but he's a damn good agent, and he didn't deserve this. We take care of our own, and this is no different. If you think of anything else I can do, just ask, and you've got it. Okay?"

"What do I tell Gibbs about DelMar? Because he's liked him for this from the very beginning."

"Yeah, I understand why. To tell you the truth, Leon, based on what you and Fornell have both told me, it sounds like someone knew that torturing DiNozzo that way would put Stefano in the frame. The whole damn thing smells like a set up, but I don't blame Gibbs for a second for falling for it. If I didn't know where Stefano has been for the past four days, I'd probably have believed it, too."

"So what do I tell him?"

"Tell him the truth," Charlie answered simply. "Read him in. Read them all in, even Fornell. I know how Gibbs gets when he's protecting his people, and I don't want them hunting Stefano down for something someone else did ten years ago. That wouldn't end well for anyone."

* * *

"Understood, Director Vance. Thank you. And good luck with Gibbs."

Fornell pressed ended the call a bit more forcefully than needed to, but nowhere near as forcefully as he wanted to. He looked up at Ziva, Tim, Abby and Ducky and shrugged.

"If it's any consolation, the FBI's intra-agency cooperation is no better than it's interagency cooperation is."

Tim turned away from Gibbs' desk, breaking the tight circle they'd formed around it when Director Vance's call came in, and walked over to his own. He tapped a few keys on his keyboard, and all of the pictures and information they'd gathered on Stefano DelMar disappeared from the plasma, leaving only a blank screen. The silence in the empty and mostly-darkened squad room was deafening.

"And back to nothing we go." Tim flopped in his chair tiredly and ran his hands through his hair.

"Not nothing, Timmy," Abby said. "It can't be nothing. You have to have something."

He rubbed his eyes quickly and leaned forward on his elbows. "Why? Have you got anything? Other than Tony's blood all over Gibbs' basement? Or the most common mold in existence on a piece of rope that could have been bought at any hardware store on the Eastern Seaboard? Or a picture of the back of some tall guy's head?"

"That's not fair."

"What about you, Ziva?" Tim stood up and stalked back toward the group. "Those fantastic, mysterious 'contacts' of yours hear anything? Find anything? Know anything?"

Ziva shook her head slowly. "No."

"Ducky? Can you tell us anything else about this guy? Other than the fact that he's not Stefano DelMar and he really hates Gibbs and Tony? Anything?"

Ducky pressed his lips together and straightened his back. "As I told you, he is a member of law enforcement, and he has direct knowledge of the Brewer investigation."

"Oh, that's right. So he might be an NCIS agent, or another employee, or he might be a D.C. Metro cop, or an FBI agent, or a reporter, or a friend of Brewer's or Kale's or ... in other words, we have a suspect pool of roughly 15,000 people. That's a big help."

"It might be a large sampling," Ducky said calmly. "But 15,000 people is better than a hundred and fifty million, don't you think?"

Tim drew a deep breath and pulled his shoulders back, and Fornell decided to step in before the obviously frazzled man went any further. 

"McGee!" He pushed himself to his feet and walked around the corner of the desk. "Gibbs' office." Tim gave no indication that he'd be moving any time soon, so Fornell put a hand on his shoulder and shoved him toward the elevator. "Now!"

Tim pulled his arm away angrily and stormed out of the squad room with Fornell following a short distance behind him. When he reached the elevator, Tim turned back around and glared at the FBI agent, who smiled patiently in response and pushed the call button. When the doors opened, Fornell held his hand out as if to say, 'After you,' and Tim stepped inside.

They rode the elevator down two floors in absolute silence before Fornell hit the stop switch. Then he turned, leaned his back and shoulders against the wall, and crossed his arms.

"So," he said. "What's up?"

Tim huffed in irritation. "Nothing. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, I don't know." Fornell kept his voice light and non-accusatory. "Maybe because you're tearing around like Gibbs after someone spilled his coffee?" 

"I'm fine."

Fornell shook his head. "You've been the one telling us all – from the very beginning – not to get too invested in DelMar. You've been the one saying it might not be him and we should be looking for other suspects, too. To be completely honest, McGee, I don't think I've ever seen anyone get so pissed off about being proven right before."

Tim ran his hands through his hair again. "But eliminating him leaves us with nothing. We can't question him about any of this, and even if we did, he wouldn't be able to help us. And Tony deserves to … he just … he deserves more than nothing."

Fornell studied the younger man's face as he talked. "When's the last time you slept, Tim?" He got a shrug for an answer. "Have you slept at all in the past twenty-four hours?"

"No." 

"And how long had you been up before Gibbs called you last night? Sixteen, seventeen hours? So you're coming up on forty-eight hours with no sleep, running the way you have been? You've been making everyone else take naps, but you haven't bothered to take one yourself?"

"I'm the senior agent right now, and it's my …"

Fornell cleared his throat. "Not for nothing, kid, but I'm pretty sure that I'm the senior agent."

Tim bristled, and Fornell raised his hand in surrender. "I get it. You're the ranking member of Gibbs' team, and that makes you responsible for taking care of everyone else, right? Even DiNozzo?"

"Especially Tony," Tim muttered.

"Okay. Well, I'm responsible for you right now, Tim. And if there's one thing I know about Gibbs, it's that he gets really pissed when you borrow his people and don't give them back in the same condition you got them in. Which means if you work yourself into the ground, it's my ass he's going to take a chunk out of, not yours. Understand?"

Tim nodded reluctantly.

"What's going to happen now is we're going to go back upstairs, and you're going to calm down. You're going to take a breath, take a nap, and look at this whole thing with a fresh eye and a new perspective, okay?" Fornell searched Tim's face for some sign of agreement, and it didn't take him long to find it. "And you're wrong. We don't have nothing. You've been working too hard for us to have nothing. What we have is a hell of a lot of something; we just don't understand who or what it means."

Tim closed his eyes and dropped his head. "Someone in law enforcement. Someone big. Someone who hasn't known Gibbs and Tony long but hates them already. Someone with knowledge of the Brewer investigation and access to the …"

Fornell shook his head as he flipped the switch again and pushed the button to go back up. "Didn't I say after a nap?"

"Access to our security feed." Tim was mumbling, but his voice was just loud enough for Fornell to make out the words. "He was watching the security feed. The cameras." Tim raised his head, and excitement flashed in his eyes. "Someone with access to our security cameras!"

The doors opened, and Tim was through them and running toward his desk before Fornell even moved. "McGee!" he called out. "I thought I told you to sleep!"

The younger man was still mumbling and muttering to himself, but Fornell couldn't hear him anymore. He was typing frantically at his keyboard, and the three other members of his team were gathering around him. 

"Timothy?"

"You have found something, McGee?"

"What is it, Timmy?"

Fornell walked up and took his place between them. "McGee, unless you want to spend the next six months picking up dog crap on the National Mall, you will lay the hell down and …"

Tim lifted his head as he hit one last key on his keyboard. "Law enforcement background, check. Graduated from the police academy three years ago; washed out of FLETC ten months ago. Works here, check. Hasn't been here long, check. He was hired seven months ago, to be exact. Knows Gibbs and Tony, check. Was working the day we went out on the Brewer murder, check. Had access to the security cameras, check. And he just so happened to abandon the monitors at the exact time Tony was being attacked, and he didn't bother to review them when he came back."

A picture popped up on the plasma, and everyone turned toward it. Fornell had never seen the man before, but it was obvious that everyone else had. Abby's jaw dropped, and she looked between the picture and Tim with something close to awe on her face.

"Robert Duncan."

Fornell turned around, and he was somehow unsurprised by the wide smile that suddenly dominated Tim's expression.

"We need to find Robert Duncan."


	14. Chapter 14

* * *

"Well, that's just … I'm confused."

Gibbs sighed and leaned back against the wall. "Yeah. That was kind of how I felt when Vance told me."

"So after all these years, me thinking Stefano got away with trying to kill me, it wasn't even him?"

"According to the director of the FBI, no. It wasn't."

"Huh." Tony stood up from the edge of the bed and walked toward the bathroom. "Ya know, I remember thinking, when they told me, that it didn't seem right. It didn't seem like something Stefano would do. Ben Rossi makes a lot more sense."

"You knew DelMar pretty well, then?"

"Better than he knew me, I guess." Tony pulled this clothes out of the closet and walked back into the room. "Or not. I never would have made him for CI material. He worshipped Mikey."

Gibbs raised his eyebrows at Tony's casual and familiar use of Macaluso's first name, but he didn't call attention to it. "So what happened that day? What could have scared DelMar enough to go to the FBI?"

Tony put the clothes on the bed and looked down at them. Neither of them had thought to tell McGee what to bring, and it was obvious from the expression on his face that Tony was trying to figure out how he was going to change into the jeans and Navy sweatshirt by himself. Gibbs pushed away from the wall and walked toward him. "Drop 'em."

Tony looked up and blinked in confusion. "Um … what?"

"Pants. Drop 'em."

Tony coughed and turned back to the clothes. "I've been getting myself dressed since I was three, Gibbs. I think I can handle this."

The tone of voice was one that Gibbs hadn't heard from Tony often, but it was enough to make him raise his hands and back away. Tony needed to know that he didn't think he was incompetent. Offering to help him change his pants probably wasn't the best way to accomplish that. 

Neither was standing there watching him try to do it himself.

"I'll wait in the hall." He turned to do just that, but a quiet, frustrated sigh stopped him.

"No." 

Gibbs turned back with a question in his eyes. Tony held the jeans out to him, and he took them. "You're right." Gibbs stepped forward as Tony stepped out of his scrub pants. "Just remind me to headslap the hell out of McGee for this."

In an effort to distract Tony from what he obviously saw as an humiliating weakness, Gibbs turned back to the conversation they'd been having before. "So, DelMar. What scared him so much?"

Tony put his right hand on Gibbs' shoulder for balance as he stepped into the jeans. "Well, we did watch Mikey murder someone that day. That might have done it." He gave a one-shouldered shrug. "It sure as hell freaked me out."

Gibbs fastened the button before he stepped back. "Who'd he kill?"

It took three attempts, but Tony managed to get the zipper up by himself. "The guy who told him I was a cop."

"Why'd he do that?"

Tony picked the sweatshirt up, looked back and forth between it and his shoulder, and sighed. Gibbs stepped forward without a word, took the sweatshirt, and pulled it over Tony's head. Tony smiled shyly in thanks as he pushed his right arm into the sleeve.

"It's a long story."

"Sounds like." Gibbs nodded his head in silent acknowledgement of Tony's gratitude. "You'll have to tell me some day."

Tony had told him some of the story before. He'd told him that the six-month op had been blown all to hell less than twelve hours before the bust, and that he'd spent the better part of two weeks in the hospital because of it. He'd never provided any specifics, and Gibbs had never pushed him for them. But the events of the past two days had made it evident that there were potentially dozens of people out there who'd be more than happy to see DiNozzo dead, and Gibbs wanted to know all of their names.

"Yeah." Tony's agreement was reluctant, but it was clear that he understood where Gibbs was coming from. "I will." He looked down at his left arm, which was still strapped tightly to his chest, and at the sleeve that dangled loose at his side. "I hate this," he said, waving the sleeve in the air. "I'm used to having two arms. This has me all off-balance."

Gibbs shrugged and sat down on the edge of the bed. "You still have two arms," he pointed out. "You just can't use one of them."

"I know." He dropped the sleeve and shot Gibbs a frustrated expression. "That's what I hate about it."

* * *

Tim slammed the phone down again. "I've tried everywhere. His apartment, his mom's house, his girlfriend's place, his dad, his sister … He's not using his credit cards, he's not using his phone, and apparently, he's not driving his car. The BOLO hasn't had any hits. I can't find him." He pushed himself out of his chair in frustration and walked to Ziva's desk. "Have you had any luck?"

"I have not." She looked up at him. "Perhaps he has gone to dirt?"

"Ground. Gone to ground." He rolled his shoulders in an effort to relieve the tension between them. "But whatever you call it, he shouldn't be able to do it this well. There's nothing in his past that indicates he has the skills to just disappear."

"The BOLO has only been out for seven hours, and it was overnight."

Tim shook his head. "He hasn't been seen or heard from, or made a phone call or touched his bank account, since he left here yesterday morning."

"You believe he has help, yes?"

Tim nodded. "Just like he did here on Monday night. The more I think about it, the more obvious it is. He couldn't have been the other man who attacked Tony in the parking lot, because one – he's not tall enough, and two – he was at the front gate the whole time. Both video and witnesses put him out there. But he had to have been involved. The chances of someone calling in a fake security breach at the exact second Tony got on the elevator to leave, it's just … well, it's so unlikely it's close to impossible."

"Yet Duncan is our suspect."

"He's a person of interest." He perched himself on the edge of her desk. 

"A subtle way of saying he is a suspect."

"He's not the one in the video, but he is our only lead to him. He knows who that man is."

Ziva looked distracted, as though a new angle had just occurred to her. "There are security cameras here in the squad room?"

Tim nodded. "Oh, yeah. They're all over the building."

"Do they have microphones?"

Tim tilted his head slightly. "I don't know. It would make sense, but they're all up so high, I don't know if it would do any good." He pointed at the camera that had the clearest shot of Tony's desk; it was in the corner above the stairs to Vance's office. "The video of the parking lot didn't have any audio on it. Why?"

"How did he know that Tony was leaving for the night?" Ziva stood up and walked toward Tony's desk. "He would have seen him getting on the elevator, but he could have been going anywhere. Had they called in the diversion too early, the attack would have been discovered. I do not believe they would have taken that chance."

As she spoke, she knelt down and started inspecting the cabinets behind the desk closely.

"You think they heard him say it?" He stood up and walked to Tony's desk, too. "They had a mic on him?"

She pulled her sleeve down over her hand and reached into the small space between the two file cabinets. When she held her hand up for Tim to see, there was a small wireless microphone in it. "I would say that is a certainty." She stood up and walked toward the elevator. "I will get this to Abby. And I will come back with an electronic surveillance detector."

Tim watched after her, shaking his head as she walked away. There had been a microphone in their squad room for who-knew-how-long, broadcasting their every word to who-knew-where, and none of them had known. "Unbelievable."

"Hey, McGee?"

It had been so long since Fornell had spoken that Tim had forgotten he was there. He was standing in front of the plasma next to Gibbs' desk, looking at the pieces of the investigation that they had assembled after the revelation that DelMar wasn't involved. 

"Yeah?"

"What are these numbers?" As he spoke, he pointed at the scan of the handwritten note that Ducky had brought up to them. 

It was a list of Tony's injuries, and next to each of them, Ducky had written which of Gibbs' tools were most likely used to inflict them. Tim hadn't been surprised to find out that the screwdriver missing from the set he had given Gibbs was the one removed from Tony's leg at the hospital. Ziva's hammer matched several of the bruises on his chest and back. Though no one would ever tell her, the cuts on Tony's arms had been made with one of the chisels Abby had given Gibbs, and the cuts on his chest were the exact same width as the blade on Ducky's plane. The most upsetting part was finding out that Tony's gift, the antique handsaw that he almost hadn't given, was used to carve Gibbs' name into his back.

There was no way anyone outside the five of them would have known where those tools had come from or who had given them to him, but it was one hell of a coincidence. 

At the bottom of that note, Ducky had written four numbers – three, six, nine, and five . They were what Fornell was asking about.

"That's how many wounds Tony had." He stepped forward and explained in more detail. "Ducky thought they might have been a pattern, because they were grouped together. Three on his right arm, six on the right side of his chest, nine on the left side, and five on his left arm." He shrugged. "He thought they might mean something, but if they do, I'll be damned if I know what it is. I've tried dates, addresses, I've even fed them into a computer program that runs every combination possible against anything that might be relevant … I've got nothing."

"Do you have pictures?" Fornell seemed strangely interested in something the McGee had all but dismissed as relevant. "Of the actual groupings?"

"Pictures of Tony's arms and chest?" Fornell nodded. "Yeah. Of course I do." He walked over to his desk, shuffled through the pictures Dr. Marquardt had given them until he found the four Fornell wanted, and handed them to him. "I don't know that they'll do you much good."

Fornell tilted his head and shrugged. "Ya never know. Maybe a fresh set of eyes will see something that you don't."

* * *

Getting out of the hospital and into the Challenger took more out of him than Tony thought it should have, but he wasn't going to complain about it. He was too glad just to be out. He spent the first half of the drive to Ducky's with his eyes closed and his head leaned back, but he couldn't rest. His mind was running faster than it had in two days, and without the morphine messing with his head, he could keep up with it. 

Unfortunately, his thoughts kept taking him to the same place, over and over again, and that was a place with more questions than answers. 

And he hated that.

"So." He spoke hesitantly, but he opened his eyes and turned his head toward Gibbs as he did it. "Do McGee and Fornell have any other suspects?"

Gibbs didn't take his eyes off the road, but he did tighten his fingers around the steering wheel. "If they do, they haven't told me about it."

"Edgar's the only witness?" He'd had the feeling, since Gibbs had told him, that he shouldn't have been surprised to find out Edgar Collins had seen them that night. He just couldn't figure out why he thought that. 

Gibbs nodded. "Fornell sent his guys back out to canvas the entire neighborhood. No one else saw anything."

He took a deep breath before he spoke again. "I don't like that, Boss. That's too much pressure for Edgar to handle. Plus, the defense attorney will …"

"I know." Gibbs' voice was tight and controlled. "But he's the only witness we've got."

Silence descended around them, and Tony turned to look out the window. He knew what he wanted to say, and he knew why. He just didn't know how. He took another deep, shaky breath and decided to dive in.

"No," he said softly. "He's not."

"Okay, then." If it was possible, Gibbs' voice was even tighter than it had been. "He's the only witness we've got who can actually remember what he saw."

"He has dementia. Who's to say that what he remembers is what really happened?"

"And you were drugged and bashed your head a time or two. You can't remember anything."

Gibbs was getting angrier by the second. Tony knew what he wanted to ask for, knew what needed to be done, but he would have to handle Gibbs carefully if he was going to get it. He moved his gaze from the side of the road to the windshield, and he lowered his voice even further.

"What if I can?"

Gibbs shook his head. "Tried that. Your lungs damn near seized up, and you could barely breathe. Remember?"

"Muscle spasms," he answered. "The potassium helped, and moving around is going to keep it from happening again."

Gibbs shook his head again, but he stayed silent.

"I've got something in here, Boss. I have to. A sound, or a smell, or …" 

"The taste of your own blood?"

Tony flinched away slightly and swallowed hard. Damn, Gibbs was pissed. "Maybe. The point is, there has to be something that will jump start it. Even in the hospital, even as bad as it sucked, I got something, didn't I?"

"Yeah. You got until they shoved that needle in your neck and stopped you from ever remembering the next three hours." Gibbs sighed deeply, and it looked like he loosened his grip on the wheel. "You know how that stuff works. It's not blocking memories that exist. It stopped your mind from creating memories in the first place."

Gibbs' voice had lost a little of its edge, and Tony sat up a bit straighter in his seat. If he was starting to get Gibbs to consider what he was saying, then he needed to push a bit more. 

"But that's not always true. We've had drugged victims remember things before. A lot of my memories of what happened the night of the Atlas case came back, too."

"Yeah?" Gibbs glanced over at him and raised his eyebrows. "You remember what happened between calling me in the parking lot and waking up in the sewer?"

Tony looked down at his feet. "Well, no."

Gibbs smiled tightly and turned his eyes back to the road. 

"But I was unconscious when Vanessa dragged me to the sewer. Monday night, I wasn't."

Gibbs pulled to a stop at a red light, and he looked at Tony in open disbelief. "How do you know that?"

"Because." He turned his gaze back out the side window again.The light turned green, and Gibbs pulled forward. He closed his eyes for just a second and pretended he didn't feel the shudder that went through him. "What's the point of torturing someone who can't feel it?"

Gibbs nodded, and Tony wondered if he'd seen the tremor that he'd tried to hide. He probably had. Gibbs saw everything.

"How do you feel, Tony?"

He forced a fake smile onto his face and turned away from the window. "Oh, ya know. I'm fine. Shoulder's a little sore, but other than that, I'm just …"

"DiNozzo."

He sighed deeply and rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. He was demanding that Gibbs be honest with him, wasn't he? Why couldn't he do the same in return? What was he gaining by lying, other than making himself feel worse than he already did?

"I'm scared." He dropped his hand into his lap and looked back out the windshield. "I'm scared, and I'm weak, and I'm wobbly, and I hate it. I don't know who this guy is. I wouldn't know him if he was standing right next to me. And I can't live like that. And if I can fix it, if I can figure out who he is and make this all go away, then I have to try."

Gibbs stopped at another red light and turned toward him. Tony made himself look him straight in the eye.

"I need to do this, Boss."

Gibbs nodded once, in both understanding and agreement. "Okay."

* * *

"Why did he say three?" Fornell looked down at the photos once more, and then back up at Tim. 

Tim sat back down at his desk and reached for the phone. It was time to call Duncan's mother again. "Because there are three, probably."

"No, there's not." Fornell walked toward him, and Tim put the phone down. "Look. On his left arm, he's got five, and they're all on his bicep. On his right arm, he's got three, yeah, but one of them is on his forearm."

"Two different groups." Tim stood and took the pictures from Fornell's hand. "Not a three. A one and a two."

"Right. So it's not 3-6-9-5. It's 1-2-6-9-5."

"Why didn't I notice that?"

Fornell gave him a look that would have melted butter, but he softened it into a smile. "Maybe because you haven't slept in two days?"

Tim sighed and nodded his head. "So what does that give us? I still don't know what it means."

"No, but I think I do." Fornell took the pictures back and moved to Gibbs' desk quickly. "I've seen it before. Recently, too. Give me a minute to check it out."

"Abby will call us when she has answers about the microphone." Ziva announced her return as she walked around the partition. "She also believes she is close to matching the handwriting on the note left on Tony's door."

"Why didn't you stay with her?" He stood and tailed her to her desk, but she kept walking. "Ziva?"

"The FBI just sent us the composite sketch that Edgar Collins gave them. I was told that it is vital that we see it immediately. I am going to get it."

Tim stood in the center of the bullpen with his arms at his sides, just watching the activity going on around him. Everyone was doing something. Fornell was on the phone with someone, asking about the numbers. Ziva was getting the composite. Abby was in her lab, running more DNA tests and trying to match handwriting. Even Ducky and Palmer, still down in autopsy, were going back over Marco Santori's body, trying to find some clue that they might have missed. And there he was, watching them work, adding absolutely nothing of value to the investigation.

Maybe it was time for him to take that nap after all.

He headed back to his desk to do exactly that, but just as he reached it, his phone started to ring. Hoping that it might be someone calling him back about Robert Duncan, he picked it up quickly.

"McGee."

"Agent McGee! You've got to help them!"

"What?" The voice sounded familiar, but it was panicked. It took his mind a few seconds to process who, exactly, had called him. "Who is … Duncan? Is this you?"

"Yes! Listen to me! You've got to …!"

Tim's heart skipped more than one beat. After all of his searching, the man he most needed to talk to was on the other end of the phone. There might be hope for the investigation yet.

"No, Duncan, you listen to me. We know that you were involved in the attack on DiNozzo, and we need to …" 

"Yes, I was. I admit it. I'll admit to anything you want, but you've got to stop him. He's going to kill them!"

"McGee!" Fornell was suddenly standing in front of his desk, waving the pictures of Tony's wounds around. "I know what these numbers are. We've gotta move."

"McGee, Agent Fornell." Ziva walked briskly around the corner, and she had something in her hands, too. "You must see this."

"Timmy!" And then Abby was standing there, bouncing up and down in excitement. "I matched it! I know who wrote the note!"

"Listen to me! He's following them to Gibbs' house."

"Why are they going to Gibbs' house?" He was getting overwhelmed with all the information flying at him, but he forced himself to concentrate on Duncan. "And how do you know that?"

"I don't know. All I know is that they are, and he called me, and he's going to kill them. It was a joke. He told me it was a joke. He just wanted to mess with him, show him that he wasn't a screw up. It wasn't supposed to happen like this. He wasn't supposed to get hurt. I'm on my way there now, but he's right behind me, and …" 

"It's a badge number, McGee. An FBI badge number. And it belonged to …" 

"Edgar Collins could not have described him so perfectly. As far as we know, he has never seen him before."

"I found it in the security logs, but it wasn't Duncan's. It was …"

They were all speaking at once, and Tim held his hand up to stop them.

"Who?!"

Four voices answered in unison, three in front of him and one through the phone.

"Bruce Rivers!"

* * *

Gibbs was sitting on the bottom of the stairs, watching Tony closely for any sign of distress. Tony, for his part, was standing stock still in the middle of the basement, right under where he and Ducky had found him. The crime scene had been released overnight, and Fornell's cleaners had a done a decent job getting rid of the blood. But at least in Gibbs' eyes, there was still a faint stain where the majority of it had pooled.

He didn't know if it was real, or if he was imagining it, but he knew that he'd probably always see it.

"You getting anything?"

Tony had his eyes closed, and he was holding his right arm out to his side. It was painful to watch, but Gibbs had no intention of stopping him. If this was what Tony needed, then this was what they would do.

Tony shook his head slowly. "It smells like …" He stopped for a few seconds and sniffed the air. "Bleach."

Gibbs nodded slowly. "Yeah. I noticed that. Think it's going to interfere?"

Tony dropped his arm, opened his eyes, and turned toward him. "I don't know. I mean, the real smell is still there. It's just … it's deeper. Like it's buried."

"What's the real smell?" Gibbs stood and walked toward him. The longer they were in the basement, the more he thought Tony had a real shot at remembering something that could help. As soon as they'd walked into the house, Tony had frozen in the doorway and muttered, 'Not real.' It had taken a few seconds to get him grounded in reality again, but Tony finally said that he remembered thinking he was imagining being in the house that night. 

Gibbs' famous gut was telling him they needed to leave, that something was about to go terribly wrong, but he couldn't deny that, at least on the surface, Tony's idea seemed to be working. If nothing else, it was giving Tony back some sense of control, and he needed that. 

Tony smiled. "Sawdust." He snorted out a short laugh, then continued. "Bourbon." He closed his eyes again and let his mind focus on the scents he usually associated with the basement. "Musty, but clean. Wood stain. Eight years of memories. It smells like you. And …" 

He trailed off, but Gibbs picked up on what he wasn't saying. Remembering what Ducky had said to him in the hospital, he offered a suggestion of his own.

"Safety."

"Yeah." Tony opened his eyes, but he looked down at his feet almost immediately. "Kinda lame, huh?"

He shook his head. "No. I want it to smell like that." He smiled, but only for a second. "I want my kids to feel safe here." He reached out and put his hand on Tony's shoulder. "I want you to feel safe here."

Tony lifted his head, looked him in the eye, and nodded. "I do."

It was one of the things that had bothered him the most since he'd first come down the stairs on Monday night. They'd invaded his home, yes, but they'd done more than that. They'd hurt Tony, badly, in the one place he should have felt the safest. Should have _been_ the safest. They'd tried to destroy the sanctuary that he'd created, both for himself and for the people he cared about. And he was still afraid that they'd manage to do it.

"You sure?"

Tony nodded. "Yeah, I'm sure." He must have seen the hesitance in Gibbs' eyes, because he kept going. "They can't take this away, Boss. I won't let them."

He squeezed Tony's arm just once, then let go. "Okay, so why don't we try …?"

A loud banging from upstairs cut him off, and they both looked up toward the sound. The pounding continued, and Gibbs recognized it as someone insistently knocking on his front door. He rolled his eyes. Everyone who knew anything about him knew that the door was unlocked, which meant this was someone he didn't know well.

"Stay here," he said as he turned. "I'll be right back."

He didn't like leaving Tony alone, but it was the best choice he had. It would have taken a long time to get Tony back up the stairs, and if it was just the mailman or a nosy neighbor, he'd exhaust himself for nothing. Besides, he'd only be gone for a minute. Just long enough to get rid of whoever that was trying to beat his door in.

He put his hand on the gun at his waist as he opened the door, and then he stopped in surprise when he saw who was standing on the other side. He recognized him immediately, but he had no idea why the man McGee had gotten fired for incompetence was standing on his doorstep.

"Duncan? What the hell …?"

"You have to leave." The man's face was red, as though he'd just run a long distance, though Gibbs could see his car outside. He was frantic, nervous, bouncing from one foot to the other as he took a few steps into the house. "You can't stay here. It's not safe."

"Get out of my …" 

"He's coming. He's right behind me! Where's DiNozzo? You've gotta get him out of here before …" 

If the gunshot surprised him, the suddenly lifeless body that toppled into his foyer surprised him even more. And the man who was standing on the sidewalk, holding the gun that shot had been fired from, left him absolutely floored.

"Rivers! What the hell are you doing?"

Rivers stepped around Duncan's body, sparing only a glance at the blood that was seeping out from what remained of the man's throat and spreading all over the hardwood floor. 

"It was him," he said simply. "Duncan. He's the one who attacked Tony in the parking lot."

"What? How did he …?"

"He did it." Rivers was wearing a damned annoying smile that Gibbs wanted nothing more than to slap off his face. He was sure it was meant to be ingratiating, but it was grating. "He set Tony up. He helped them get into the Yard, and he told them when he was heading to his car. He was behind the whole thing. He was coming here to finish him off."

There was something not right about what Rivers was saying, and he knew it, but he couldn't put his finger on it. He should have been able to think a bit more clearly, but there was a dead man bleeding all over his floor, and the one lead that they might have had to who tried to kill Tony was gone. 

"So you just killed a suspect?" The smile fell from Rivers' face, and his eyes narrowed. "You stupid son of a …" 

"I was protecting Tony." His voice had gone from irritating to low and tight. "Isn't that what you want? Is that what you always want? Protect Tony at all costs?"

"Not like that!" Gibbs' phone started to ring, and he pulled it out of his pocket. "Put that damn gun away before I shoot you." He glanced down at the screen and flipped the phone open.

"McGee …" 

White-hot pain exploded in the back of his head, and everything went black.

* * *

Tony heard the sound of raised voices from upstairs, but he didn't get alarmed until the he heard the gunshot. 

He started toward the stairs, but he realized quickly that he'd be of no use to Gibbs with only one arm. He pulled his shirt up, undid the straps securing his left arm to his chest, and let it fall to his side. Pain shot down into his fingers and up into his shoulder, but he gritted his teeth and ignored it. 

The voices upstairs had grown even louder, and they were starting to sound angry. Then Gibbs starting cussing. He had to get up there.

It cost him precious seconds to push his arm into his sleeve, and he bit off a cry of pain as he straightened muscles that hadn't moved in thirty-six hours, but he managed. He moved to the stairs and started up as quickly as he could. He had to hold the railing to keep from toppling over, but he forced himself to keep climbing. 

The voices from upstairs had stopped. The house was silent. He had just reached the landing when a familiar face appeared in the doorway.

"Hey there, Golden Boy."

He'd been wrong about needing smells to help him remember what had happened Monday night. He'd needed a sounds. Specifically, he'd needed to hear that voice speak those two words. 

"Bruce. You …"

He saw the gun in Rivers' hand as he raised it, and he felt it when it came down against the side of his face. He knew he was falling, but there was nothing he could do to stop it.

The last sound he heard was his own voice screaming as his left shoulder slammed into the concrete floor.


	15. Chapter 15

* * *

"McGee …"

A grunt. A thud. A shuffling sound. Then silence.

"Boss?" Nothing. "Gibbs!"

Tim slammed the phone down and shot out of his chair. "He's there." He ran to Gibbs' desk and pulled open the top drawer.

"Ziva!" He threw the keys to her, and he was moving again before she plucked them out of the air. "Get the car. Meet us out front." She ran to follow his orders, and he spun back around. "Abby, tell Ducky and Vance what's going on."

"What _is_ going on?"

"Rivers is at the house with Gibbs and Tony."

The fear and worry on her face registered with him, but he couldn't soothe them. He mad more important things to worry about.

"Timmy, what do I …?"

"I don't have time right now, Abby. I'm sorry. We've gotta go." He turned one last time and ran toward the stairs. "Fornell, with me!"

To his credit, Fornell didn't protest or try to take charge. He followed right on Tim's heels – out of the squad room, through the door, and down the stairs. 

"Elevator?"

"No time." There was no time. There was no time for anything. Tony and Gibbs needed them, immediately, and they were at least thirty minutes away. Damn it!

_'Slow down, McGee. Think. Don't come charging in unprepared and get us killed.'_

"What did you hear?" Fornell was having no trouble keeping up with him. The man didn't even sound winded. It was a sharp contrast to Tim's own frantic breaths and the heart that felt like it was about to explode through his chest. "On the phone?"

Tim shook his head as they hit the bottom of the stairs. "Duncan hung up on me. I called Gibbs. He answered, said my name, and then nothing. It sounded like he fell, or got hit, I don't know. Someone hung up his phone, but it wasn't him." He pulled the door open and stepped through, but he didn't hold it for Fornell. "He's there. He's got them."

"Don't you think that we should …?"

"He is going to kill them."

Fornell huffed in frustration. "What about backup, McGee? Don't you think we need some?"

"Vance'll send every available agent we've got." He knew the director would make sure they had the backup they needed, but Tim had every intention of making certain that they didn't need any. "We don't have time to wait around for them."

This was his team Rivers was screwing with. They were his friends. They were his family. 

He was going to stop the bastard himself.

"So what are we doing here?" The question wasn't patronizing, but the tone of voice sure as hell was. Tim felt anger mixing with the fear that coursed through his veins. "Where are we going?"

"Armory."

"Why?" Condescension was replaced by confusion, and Tim understood it. He wasn't entirely sure why they were down there, either. "I have my weapon. You and David have yours."

It wasn't until they were standing in front of the door that he understood exactly what he was doing, and he recognized the voices in his head for what they were.

_'That's it, Probie. You've got a plan. Stick to it.'_

He opened the door with more certainty and send of purpose than he'd ever felt before. 

"We need a bigger one."

_'Save our asses.'_

* * *

His first thought on returning to consciousness was that his head hurt. His second was that his butt was cold. His third was that he couldn't move his arms. His fourth was …

"Tony!"

His eyes shot open just as the soft, pained voice reached his ears. 

"Right here, Boss."

Tony's eyes were closed, and his head rested against the inside of his right arm. Blood from the new gash on his eyebrow had dried along the side of his face, and the beginnings of what was sure to be a spectacular bruise showed down the side his left eye and across his cheekbone. His shirt was gone, and the sutured wounds and fading bruises that peppered his chest and arms stood out against his pale skin. His left shoulder, what Gibbs could see of it, was a swollen, deformed, blackened mess. His arms were above his head, his hands tied tightly with a cord that looked like it had been ripped from one of his shop lights. The bandages that had been protecting the damaged skin of his wrists were gone, and the cord had already started digging in. An orange extension cord ran between his hands, around the bindings, and looped over the beam above. But he was on his feet, holding his own weight, and that alone was a vast improvement over the last time he had found him in a similar position.

Gibbs saw it all in seconds, and he knew how screwed they were before his mind was even finished processing it. 

"Bastard keeps punching holes in my ceiling."

Tony snorted, and Gibbs nodded in satisfaction. The moan that followed turned that small moment of normalcy into something much more dire. 

"I'll fix it for ya." Tony's eyelashes fluttered, but his eyes stayed closed. "Least I can do."

With Tony's condition assessed, Gibbs turned his attention to his own predicament. His head hurt because he'd been smacked in the back of the head with something, most likely Rivers' gun – the same gun that had been used to kill Robert Duncan. His butt was cold because he was sitting on the concrete floor. He couldn't move his arms because they were tied behind him, around the four-by-four post that held his stairs up. His fingers were clumsy and swollen, but they were still sensitive enough to tell the difference between an electrical cord and rope. 

That was good. Electrical cord could do a lot of damage, and pulling against it had a tendency to make knots tighter, but it was also slicker than rope. It could be loosened, if you knew what you were doing. He started working at the knot with his fingertips, and he turned the rest of his attention back to Tony.

"What do you know about hanging drywall, DiNozzo?"

"Not a damn thing." Tony shifted his feet an inch or so, and another moan escaped him as even that small movement jarred his shoulder. He opened his eyes slowly and looked at Gibbs without moving his head. "I know I wanted to remember, Boss. But this … is a bit much."

"So, you do?" It was a dumb question, but he wasn't really worried about looking smart. He was worried about keeping Tony talking. "Remember?"

Tony's expression said that not only was it a stupid question, it was just about the stupidest question he'd ever heard. "Oh, yeah."

Lines of pain and exhaustion battled for dominance on Tony's face. Even the slightest movement made him flinch or groan. His chest was rising and falling with each huffed breath, but his breathing, though audible, was shallow. Too shallow.

_'He's got to breathe as deeply as he can, and he has to exhale completely. If he doesn't, he is going to get pneumonia.'_

"Breathe," he ordered. "In and out." 

"Working on it."

His aching fingers refused to respond to any more of his mental commands, so he relaxed them and let what little blood could get into them flow back in. He glanced around the basement, both wondering where Rivers had gotten off to and grateful that he wasn't there. His eyes fell on Tony again, standing next to the hanging light with his eyes closed tightly and his forehead pressed against the inside of his arm.

"You okay, Tony?"

Another dumb question. And one that he didn't expect to be answered. He expected a lie. He expected a deflection. He expected sarcasm. He expected a "Yeah," or a "Sure," or a "Peachy." 

He got the truth.

"No."

And it scared the hell out of him.

* * *

Ziva opened the door and started to climb out when she saw them approaching, but Tim shook his head at her. "No! You're driving."

She gave his new weapon a curious glance as he climbed into the front seat with her, and then she smiled at him in both understanding and approval. Fornell climbed in behind her.

"What does it matter who dr ...?"

The door slammed shut and Fornell was thrown against the back of the seat when she pushed her foot down on the gas and peeled out of the parking lot.

"Damn it, David!"

"We are in a hurry." 

It was the only explanation she was going to offer, and it was more than Tim thought she owed. He turned around slightly in his seat, and he fixed a glare on Fornell. None of it was his fault, and Tim knew it, but he was pissed. He had to take it out on someone, and the FBI agent was available.

"How the hell did that man pass a psych eval?"

Fornell didn't react to the anger at all. He simply shook his head. "Hell if I know." He took a breath and let it out, trying to ignore the way the cars and buildings sped past them as Ziva weaved her way in and out of traffic. "I knew he wasn't the greatest of field agents, but I thought he might grow into it. And I knew he was pissed at Gibbs about his nose and DiNozzo about the locksmith thing, but … I never saw this coming."

"Two days." Tim turned back around in his seat and stared out the windshield. "He was right there. Right in front of us. The whole damned time!"

"Wait." Fornell leaned forward, obviously confused. "He was where?"

"At the hospital." Ziva answered without taking her eyes from the road. "Where you sent him to protect the man he had just tried to kill."

"At the … Where I …?" Fornell looked back and forth between them as he spluttered and stammered. "I didn't put him on protection detail."

"So, you did know something was up with him, then." It was the only conclusion that made any sense to Tim. Protection details were usually easy jobs, and with Gibbs there, it would have been even easier. If Fornell wouldn't have assigned him to it, then …

"There was no protection detail to assign him to, McGee. I didn't assemble one. And even if I had, I wouldn't have sent him."

"Because you doubted his stability?" Ziva asked the question with only the tiniest hint of sarcasm.

"No. Because he lost a witness through a bathroom window and didn't notice he was gone until I called him forty-five minutes later. Because he turned his back on a man who stole his gun and used it to murder someone. Because he's an incompetent idiot who should have never had a badge in the first place. But mainly because he's not an agent anymore."

"What?" Ziva spun her head quickly, and her hands followed suit. She noticed her mistake immediately and steered their car back into the right lane before they hit anyone or anything, but it was enough to drain most of the color from Fornell's face.

Tim didn't even notice.

"Since when?" he demanded.

"Since Friday. When he was fired for being an incompetent idiot." He looked at each of them in turn before he continued. "I told Gibbs."

"Did you?" Tim turned in his seat again. "He told me and Tony that you almost got suspended, but he didn't say anything about anyone being fired."

Fornell's face went blank as he thought back over every conversation he'd had with Gibbs over the past few days, obviously trying to remember if he'd actually said what he thought he had.

"Come on, Fornell. Do you really think he'd have let Rivers within a hundred feet of Tony if he'd known that he'd been fired?"

Fornell shook his head slowly. "No. He wouldn't have."

* * *

The vibration of the beam at his back told him that someone had just walked onto the landing, and he lifted his head. The steps were even, unhurried, unconcerned. And the son of a bitch was whistling.

"Hello."

He wanted to jump up from the floor and charge him, tackle him to the ground, and beat his face in, but he couldn't. He'd managed to get the first loop of the knot at his wrists undone, but he still had at least five more to go. He settled for narrowing his eyes in hatred. 

"Rivers, what the hell are you …?"

Everything about the motion was smooth. The way he reached to the back of his waistband, the way he swung his arm back around, and the way he lifted the gun and aimed it straight at Tony's face.

The message was received. Gibbs swallowed the rest of what he'd been planning to say.

"Hey, DiNozzo."

Tony opened his eyes, just a bit at first, but then wide when he realized that he was staring down the barrel of a gun.

"Do you recognize this?"

Tony's posture stiffened, and he shot a panicked glance at Gibbs. Yeah, he recognized it. Gibbs didn't, but Tony's reaction told him whose it was.

"Do you?"

He didn't answer. Instead, he straightened up as much as he could and stared directly ahead.

Rivers pressed the gun against Tony's temple and leaned in. "Do you?!"

Tony's flinch was impossible to hide, and his voice wavered slightly when he spoke. "It's mine."

Rivers smiled. "Yeah, it is. Do you know what I've done with it?"

Tony's eyes darted to Gibbs again, and Gibbs nodded almost imperceptibly.

"Killed … someone."

"Two someones, actually." Rivers pulled the gun away and looked down at it. "But it didn't have quite the effect it was supposed to." Neither Tony nor Gibbs spoke, and Rivers continued. "I mean, I got jumped from behind. I got knocked out, someone stole my gun, and he killed a scumbag with it. And do you know what I got?"

Tony shook his head.

"Fired." Rivers turned toward Gibbs. "But you … You get jumped from behind, get knocked out, someone steals your gun and kills a scumbag with it … and you get coddled and sheltered and pampered by your boss here." He cocked his head and turned back around. "What is it about you, DiNozzo? What makes you so special?"

Tony scrunched his forehead in confusion. 

_'He can't answer that. He doesn't know.'_

Gibbs cleared his throat and drew Rivers' attention back to him. Rivers smiled again, a deranged, crooked smile that made every hair on Gibbs' arms and neck stand on end. 

"That reminds me." He tucked the gun back into his waistband as he walked around Tony to the rack that Gibbs kept his lumber on. Gibbs watched him warily, and Tony turned his head as far as he could and tried to keep his eyes on him. Rivers spent a few seconds looking through the short pieces of two-by-four and one-by-six before picking one up and tossing it in the air a few times to check the weight. He smiled again. "Do you remember telling me that I shouldn't try to get back at him, DiNozzo?" He clapped Tony on the back as he walked by, knocking him off balance just enough that he had to step forward.

Tony gasped as he pulled himself back up. "Bruce, don't."

"I told you there'd be payback, didn't I?" He kept walking straight toward Gibbs. "You laughed at me."

"Don't!"

Tony's frantic pleading told him that something was coming, and he tried to prepare himself for it. But there was no preparing for the pain that shot through his face when Rivers swung the board squarely into his nose. His eyes watered, and he could feel the warmth of blood gushing down his face almost instantaneously. 

"I lost a fight with a door," Rivers said. "And you just lost a fight with a two-by-four." He tapped Gibbs on the end of the nose, sending more pain shooting up the shattered cartilage. "You might wanna ice that."

Then he stood up, tossed the two-by-four aside, and slowly removed his jacket. 

"I could have just shot you and been done with it. Maybe I should have. Put a nice hole in your head like the one I gave that stupid Marco. Or maybe shot you in the gut and left you to bleed to death on the ground somewhere, alone. Shooting you with your own gun. There's poetry in that, isn't there?"

He pulled the gun out of his waistband and looked down at it. Then he put it on the sawhorse he was standing next to. 

"But then I thought of something better. I thought … I'll shoot you with _his_ gun. That's not just poetic. That's perfect." Gibbs' heart dropped into his shoes as Rivers pulled his weapon out of his pants pocket and turned it back and forth in his hand. "You know, if you'd drawn on me upstairs, if you'd shot me when you had the chance, none of this would be happening right now." He pointed the gun at Tony without looking at him, and Gibbs froze. "Don't you feel stupid?"

"Why?" Tony was hurting, he was scared, and he was tired, but none of those things were evident in his voice. "Just … why?"

"Why?" He spun on Tony, his face suddenly bright red and spluttering in anger. "Why?!" He punctuated the question by pressing the gun so tightly against Tony's chin that he shoved his head back. "Because you ruined my life!"

Tony looked Rivers in the eye, shook his head slowly, and met his anger with calm. "No, Bruce. I didn't."

Rivers dropped the gun to his side and looked down at the ground. Gibbs would have been amazed at the reaction those four simple words had gotten if it were anyone else, but it was Tony. He'd always been an excellent hostage negotiator. One of the best NCIS had. He'd just never had to negotiate for himself before.

"They did this to you." Gibbs felt useless, but he was aware that his usual style would probably do more harm than good, so he kept his mouth shut, his eyes on Tony, and his fingers moving. "You didn't deserve it. Fornell should have had your six, and the director should have seen how valuable you are. You outsmarted NCIS, didn't you? You got me and my car out of the Yard without anyone even knowing I was gone."

Gibbs' gut clenched. Tony smiled at him, a tired but understanding smile that said he didn't believe a word he was saying. Gibbs released the breath he'd been holding and used his shoulder to wipe some of the blood away from his nose. 

"You had them chasing Stefano, and he had nothing to do with it. You were at the hospital the entire time, and no one ever suspected you. You're too smart for them to throw away like that over one little mistake. You were probably the smartest person in your class, weren't you?"

Rivers nodded.

"Let me help you, Bruce." Tony's patience and empathy were a thing of beauty, and they were on full display. He was pulling out every trick he knew, and if Gibbs hadn't known better, he'd have believed that Tony sincerely wanted to save the man who'd tortured him and left him for dead. If anyone had asked him, at that moment, why he kept Tony around, the answer would have been simple.

_'Because he can do that.'_

"What happened with Kale wasn't your fault. You're right. He blindsided you. There was nothing you could have done."

Rivers shook his head slowly. "Nothing."

"So let me help you. Let's fix this. Together."

"How?" Rivers' voice was soft, and he didn't lift his eyes from the floor. 

Gibbs felt another loop of the knot slip out beneath his fingers. Four down, two to go.

"Maybe you could have done something on Friday, but now? I've killed two people. I've spent two days trying to kill you. You really think you can help me?" He raised his head as he spoke. Tony opened his mouth, but the look in Rivers' narrowed eyes stopped him from answering. 

"You really think I want you to?" 

He laughed, a sound so filled with hatred and insanity that it made Gibbs' blood run cold. "You're good. I'll give you that." 

Tony completely deflated as Rivers walked back over to the sawhorse, put Gibbs' gun down on it, and started rolling up his sleeves.

"Your little show did have an effect on me, so you should be proud. Because of what you said, I've decided not to shoot you." He reached into the pocket of the jacket he'd draped across the sawhorse. "I think this is a much better way to get my point across."

The light reflected from the blade of the knife that Rivers held in his hand. Every muscle in Tony's body tensed, he swallowed hard, and he stared at Gibbs in wide-eyed horror.

_'That's mine. God damn it!'_

"You son of a bitch." 

He shouldn't have said it, and he knew it as soon as the words left his mouth. But Rivers didn't react in anger; he simply smiled and turned away. Gibbs pulled against the cord, even though his rational mind told him it was a bad idea. He had two loops left to work out, and all he was doing was making them tighter. 

"No!" He didn't even try to keep the desperation out of his voice. He was beyond caring if Rivers heard it or not. "I'm the one who broke your nose, Rivers. I'm the one who could have talked you up to Fornell. I could have kept you from getting fired. Not him. You want to take it out on someone, take it out on me!"

Tony squeezed his eyes shut, and even from six feet away, Gibbs could see that he was terrified. His lips were moving, but no sound was coming out. He was pleading, silently, begging … praying. Rivers placed the tip of the blade against the hollow at the base of Tony's throat and dragged it down his chest. He didn't press hard enough to break the skin, but he got the reaction he wanted.

Tony started trembling and gasping as the steel of the blade moved across his skin, and Rivers smiled. 

"Now. Where should I start?"

He didn't care what he had to do to get free. He'd cut his own hands off with that damn cord if it would help. He had two loaded weapons within arms reach, and he was going to get to them. He was going to use them.

One way or another.

Bruce Rivers was going to die.


	16. Chapter 16

* * *

Rivers was whistling again.

He was circling Tony like a spider would a fly in its web, not cutting him, just dragging the blade across his skin, occasionally poking him with the tip, and whistling a nursery rhyme as he went. Gibbs looked straight into Tony's wide, frantic and haunted eyes, and he refused to look away. The blood from his nose hadn't stopped, but it had slowed enough that he could breathe without needing to tip his head back too much. It still hurt like hell, but it was survivable.

Rivers moved behind Tony, and he started shaking so badly that even Gibbs could see it. Gibbs straightened his shoulders, kept his eyes locked with Tony's, and gave a short, sharp nod.

_'You can do this, DiNozzo. You will make it through this. You will not give up.'_

Tony's breath hitched in his throat, and he swallowed hard, but he nodded quickly in return.

_'I hear ya, Boss.'_

"Here above the woodworker's bench, the golden boy is dying …"

Bitter, burning bile rose in Gibbs' throat at both the insanity of the words and the casual innocence with which they were being sung. Rivers continued to circle until he reached Tony's right side, and then he stopped.

"Let's see how fast his blood flows …"

Rivers flicked his wrist, and the knife sliced cleanly through the skin above Tony's ribs, from his armpit to the waist of his jeans.

Tony jerked away and cried out, but he caught his lip between his teeth and bit down, silencing the cry before it became a scream. Gibbs yanked against the cord again, once more tightening the knot that he'd been seconds from untying. Rivers walked between them, raised the knife, and pressed the flat of the blade against Tony's cheek.

"Look! Now he's crying."

Gibbs had seen Tony hurt before. He'd seen him sick, shot, stabbed and sliced open. He'd seen him beaten, battered, bruised and damn near broken. He'd seen him mourn a partner. He'd seen him mourn a lover. He didn't think that he had ever, in the eight years he'd known him, seen tears in his eyes. 

Until that moment.

It was those eyes that kept Gibbs focused on the objective. They had to get out. He had to get free so he could end it. He started working at the knot for the third time, and his eyes sent another silent message across the room.

_'Eyes open and on me. Don't close them. Don't look away.'_

Tony forced himself to breathe, ignored the blood that was oozing down his side and already soaking into his jeans, and held his chin a bit higher. He blinked rapidly to clear the tears away, but his gaze never wavered.

_'Got it.'_

Rivers tilted his head and turned from Tony to Gibbs and back again. "What are you two doing?" He turned all of his attention to Gibbs and started walking toward him. "Why is he staring at you? What are you doing over here?"

Gibbs didn't answer. He didn't even move. If Rivers found out that he'd almost freed his hands, they'd lose the only hope they had of surviving. But there was nothing to stop him.

"He's just … better looking … than you."

Nothing except Tony's smart mouth, that was.

Rivers turned back around, and Gibbs took advantage of those few seconds to gather the loose ends of the cord together in his hands. 

"Ya know, that would explain a lot. If it was true. But I don't think that's it." He turned back and continued walking.

Gibbs ran through all the possible scenarios in his mind. He could kick the bastard's legs out from under him, grab the knife or one of the guns … if Rivers weren't walking just an inch too far away, and if he'd managed to get that last damn knot out. But all he could do as Rivers moved behind him was keep his breathing even and his eyes on Tony's.

"Oh, Gibbs. You're as smart as everyone told me you are, aren't you?" Rivers knelt down behind him and clucked his tongue. "Open your hands."

Gibbs didn't move.

He didn't see the knife, but he felt it slice across the backs of his hands, and his fingers flew open against his will. Rivers sighed as he gathered the loose ends of the cord and started looping and knotting them again, tighter and more complex than he had done originally.

"I just don't get it, Gibbs. I don't. I mean, you're good. One of the best." Gibbs flinched as the cord cut into his wrists. "You could have any senior field agent you want. I know guys at the FBI who would kill for the chance to be your second. Good agents, smarter and stronger than he could ever be. Like me. I'm better than he is, and I'd have given you 110% every day." He put one last knot in the cord before leaning across Gibbs' shoulder and pointing the knife at Tony. "Why do you waste your time on him?"

Gibbs lifted his chin, but other than that, he remained unmoving.

"If you have to ask the question, you wouldn't understand the answer."

Tony actually managed to grin at that.

Rivers shifted his position until he was next to Gibbs rather than behind him. Gibbs didn't have to turn his head to know the man was glaring at him.

"I'm being unfair to you, Gibbs. Just like you, I'm paying way too much attention to DiNozzo. But unlike you, I can admit that to myself. And I'm willing to fix it."

The knife moved again, two quick slashes across his upper arm. Gibbs grimaced and grunted at the pain, but he made no other sound. Rivers leaned back and raised the knife again.

"You're … an idiot … Bruce."

Rivers froze, and Gibbs narrowed his eyes.

_'Don't do it, DiNozzo.'_

Gibbs knew that Tony understood the unspoken warning, but he ignored it.

"You think … you think you're better? Than me?" Tony wrapped his right hand around the extension cord and pulled himself up to almost his full height. He was gasping for breath, whether from the pain or the shock or the emotion, Gibbs didn't know. It was taking everything he had, but Tony was still on his feet, and his voice, though raspy and breathy, was firm. "You're nothing."

_'Stop pissing him off.'_

"You couldn't even … impress Fornell. You think Gibbs would give you … the time of day? Pick you? Like he picked me? No chance. You're … pathetic."

_'Shut up, Tony!'_

Rivers slowly pushed himself to his feet, turned, and walked back across the basement. 

Gibbs knew what Tony was doing. He wasn't antagonizing Rivers for fun. He wasn't playing the self-sacrificing martyr, and he didn't have a death wish. He had a reason for poking the hornet's nest, and it was a damn good one. Gibbs didn't like it – he hated it – but he also agreed that it was the only way. 

_'I can't get loose, Boss. But you can.'_

Gibbs started on the knots again, and his fingers worked at them rapidly. He ignored the stinging cuts across the backs of his hands and the blood that oozed down his wrists. Tony's life depended on how fast he could get himself free.

Both of their lives did.

Rivers wasn't whistling anymore. He wasn't circling, or singing, or laughing. He was glaring at Tony with open and undisguised hatred. He leaned closer, until he was only inches from Tony's ear, but he spoke loudly enough for Gibbs to hear him, too.

"You wanna play, DiNozzo?"

"What's the … point?" Tony closed his eyes for just a second, and when he opened them again, he was looking directly at Rivers. 

_'No! You look at me!'_

"You know … I'm gonna win. I always do … don't I?"

"Okay." Rivers nodded his head and took one step back. "Okay, DiNozzo. Let's play."

Rivers struck quickly and wildly, swinging the knife up and at an angle, slicing Tony's chest from his right hip to his left shoulder.

"Let's play."

* * *

The screech of the car's tires hadn't even faded away before Tim started moving. He climbed out of the car, slung the strap of his weapon over his shoulder, and turned toward the side yard.

"McGee." Ziva called to him as she rounded the front of the car, and he turned his head. "I have done this several times. You have not."

He shook his head quickly. "I know, Ziva, but I need you inside."

Ziva looked at him in silence for a moment, almost as if she was evaluating him. Then she smiled softly and nodded. "Do not forget to compensate for the glass. It will deflect the angle the shot. Study the situation and know the location of your target at all times. Take three deep breaths, and squeeze on the pause after the last." She squeezed his arm. "You can do this, McGee."

He nodded in return. "I have to."

Fornell walked up to them, straightening his jacket as he crossed the sidewalk. "What's your plan, McGee?"

Tim took a deep breath. He'd worked out the last few details in his mind on the drive over. The success or failure of his plan depended on several factors that he couldn't control and no small amount of luck, and he knew that. But he also knew that if everything worked the way he thought it would, it would work.

"You two are going to distract Rivers. If he hates Gibbs and Tony this much because he got fired, he's got to be pretty pissed at you, too, Fornell. It should be easy for you to get his attention. Draw him out, get him as far away from both of them as you can. If we can end this without taking him out, then we will, but if we can't …"

"How long do you need?" Fornell had abandoned all pretense of being the one in charge, and Tim was thankful for that fact.

"Give me three minutes to get into position, then move in. Stay clear of the window."

"Just one problem, McGee." Fornell pulled his own weapon out and held it at his side. "What if they aren't in the basement?"

"They are."

"How can you be sure?"

He'd questioned that himself, but there was nowhere else they could be. "He likes symbolism," he said. "Setting it up to make us think of Rob Brewer, bringing Tony here the first time, carving Gibbs' name into his back and his own badge number into his chest and arms ..."

"He started this in the basement," Ziva added. "He will want it to end there."

"We're wasting time." Tim wrapped his hand around the strap of the sniper rifle and pulled it higher on his shoulder. "Three minutes. Give me three minutes, then move in."

Tim turned and jogged toward the side of the house. Behind him, Fornell gave voice to the words that had been running through his own mind since he'd tossed the car keys to Ziva in the squad room.

"He'd better be right."

Ziva silenced any and all second thoughts or self doubt that Fornell's words might have stirred up.

"He is."

* * *

Gibbs had a mental list of things he'd been witness to that he never wanted to see or hear again. Every item on it had, without exception, haunted his nightmares for weeks, if not months, after they'd happened. He never added anything until he'd given it time to affect him, because not every horrific thing he saw stayed with him. Plus, he was a hard bastard, so it wasn't easy to earn a spot on that list. Not even a low one.

The sound of Tony screaming had jumped straight to the top of it.

Gibbs had ground his teeth together and tried to ignore it, but it sliced through his ears and clawed against the inside of his skull. He wanted to close his eyes, to pretend he couldn't see the blood that was flowing down Tony's chest and arms, but he couldn't. It didn't matter that Tony hadn't looked at him in what seemed like forever, that his eyes were closed, that he wasn't giving any indication that he'd be opening them any time soon. 

He would not turn away.

To say that Tony was in bad shape would have been an understatement. Rivers had cut him twice more, once on the inside of each arm, and he'd taken a sadistic pleasure in cutting out the stitches and deepening the letters on his back. He'd backhanded him four times, twice with the handle of the knife, and Tony's right eye was so swollen that Gibbs doubted he could open it if he tried. None of the cuts were deep enough to hit any major veins, but between his arms, chest, back, side and battered face, he was a bloody mess. 

And through it all, Tony hadn't screamed. He'd moaned, and he'd gasped, and he'd whimpered, and he'd bitten his lip so hard and so many times that there was blood running down his chin, but he hadn't screamed.

Until Rivers decided to dig his thumb into the swollen, deformed, black and purple wreckage of Tony's left shoulder. 

Three times.

Then, with the sounds of Tony's screams still echoing in the air, he'd turned and walked up the stairs. He hadn't said a word about where he was going or what he was doing, but that was just fine with Gibbs. If it gave Tony even a few seconds of peace, if it gave Gibbs even a few moments to untie another knot or two, then it was worth it.

Tony's head was leaning against his right arm again, his breathing was labored and shaky, and his eyes were closed. Gibbs half-hoped that he'd passed out, but he knew that he hadn't. Tony's knees had somehow, miraculously, not buckled. He'd wrapped the extension cord around his right hand, and he was using it to keep himself straight, but he wasn't hanging from it. He was still standing.

"DiNozzo?"

It took a few seconds, but he got an answer.

"Pre … present." 

Tony tried to take a deep breath, and he turned his head further into his arm when it triggered a coughing fit. The coughs were deep, wet-sounding, and they wracked his whole body, including his shoulder. He jerked away from the pain instinctively, but that just made it sharper, which made him gasp for air, which made him cough, which started the whole thing over again.

"Tony." Gibbs kept his voice soft but firm. "Listen to me. You're hurting yourself. You have to calm down."

Tony tried to swallow the next round of coughs, but holding them in just seemed to make them worse.

"Stop fighting. Relax. Concentrate. Slow, even breaths. No coughing. No moving. Just breathing. You can do that."

Tony didn't answer, but it was obvious that he was trying to do as he was told. Slowly but steadily, he managed to get his breathing under control.

"Atta boy."

After a few more moments, once the entire episode was nothing more than a highly unpleasant memory, Tony leaned his head back against his arm and cracked his eyes open.

"Fuck."

The side of Gibbs' mouth twitched upwards, and he shook his head. 

"Eloquent, DiNozzo."

There was a sound from above them, from the door at the top of the stairs. A lock clicking into place.

Rivers had never left the basement. He'd heard the entire conversation.

"You two make me sick." He started descending the stairs. "And you say I'm the pathetic one, DiNozzo? Really? You can't even breathe without your precious boss telling you how."

Gibbs locked his gaze on Tony's once more, and he forced his swollen fingers to move faster. The blood from his hands was actually helping; it was making the cord even slicker and easier to push through itself. He'd gotten all but the last two knots out again.

He only needed three minutes.

* * *

He should have given himself more than three minutes.

The window that overlooked the basement stairs was large, so he should have had no problem choosing the perfect 'nest' for himself. Should have had. Would have had. If that window hadn't been covered over with dust, cobwebs, and grass clippings that the lawn mower had left behind.

Tim fell to his knees, then to his stomach, and started slowly, carefully, wiping a small spot clean. 

He could only pray that no one on the other side of the window would notice what he was doing.

* * *

"That's three minutes." Fornell looked up from his watch and nodded at Ziva as she reached out and slowly, carefully, turned the knob.

It didn't move.

"He has locked the door," she whispered. 

Fornell took a moment to consider the situation. "McGee wants us to distract Rivers, right?"

Ziva nodded.

"So let's distract him."

Fornell lifted his foot and kicked the door with everything he had.

* * *

The sound of something slamming into the door startled both Gibbs and Tony, but Rivers didn't seem bothered by it. He glanced at his watch as his foot hit the floor, and he smiled.

"Cavalry's here. And right on time, too." He didn't slow his pace as he crossed the room. "I figure I've got about a minute before they get through that door. Let's give them a little preview of what they're going to see when they do."

Rivers pulled back his fist and slammed it straight into Tony's collarbone.

* * *

Tim's head jerked up when he heard the scream.

"Tony!" he whispered.

Then he pulled his sleeve down over his hand and started wiping the glass frantically.

* * *

"Tony!" Ziva breathed.

She turned sideways, bent her knees, and her foot joined Fornell's against the door.

* * *

The second-to-last knot slipped out as Tony's scream faded away.

Rivers opened the knife and stepped behind him. He grabbed a handful of Tony's hair and pulled his head back, then he snaked his arm around his neck. He pressed the tip of the blade against Tony's unprotected throat.

Tony's eyes were barely open, he was staring dazedly at the window above the stairs, and he was blinking slowly. Then, for some reason Gibbs didn't understand, his eyes widened ever-so-slightly, and he smiled.

* * *

Tim had cleaned a large enough section of the window that he could see into the basement clearly. He positioned the rifle and looked through the scope, but he pulled back almost immediately.

"God damn it."

Rivers had known they were coming. Of course, he'd known they were coming! He knew that McGee had called Gibbs, didn't he? He'd hung up on him. So he'd known they were coming, and he'd taken steps to protect himself. There was no way Tim could take the shot.

Tony was in the way.

* * *

The door flew open with so much force that it slammed into the wall behind it and almost closed again, but Fornell and Ziva were already moving. Weapons raised, they burst onto the landing. Ziva took three steps forward and stopped, and Fornell moved down three steps before he did the same.

"Rivers!"

Even from above, they couldn't get a clear shot. Rivers had known they were coming, and he'd made sure that he was safely behind the one person in the basement who was tall enough to shield him.

Tony was in the way.

* * *

The last knot slipped free. The cord fell away. Gibbs lunged for the sawhorse, grabbed the first gun he touched – Tony's – and came up to one knee. He lifted the weapon, held it steady, and aimed it right where Bruce Rivers' head should have been.

"Drop the knife!"

But Rivers had moved far enough behind Tony that Gibbs couldn't get a clear shot. He didn't dare move any closer, for fear of Rivers using the knife that he was pressing against Tony's neck. But there was no way he could take a shot with Rivers standing where he was.

Tony was in the way.

* * *

Tim took a deep breath and looked back through the scope again.

His prayers hadn't been answered. Someone in the basement had noticed him. Someone knew where he was and what he was doing. That was the bad news.

The good news was that it was Tony. Neither Gibbs nor Rivers seemed to see him, but Tony was staring right at him. Tim took another breath, adjusted his aim slightly, and tightened his grip on the rifle.

Tony glanced at the floor and then back up. Tim caught the message, and he nodded quickly in understanding.

* * *

"I'm in charge here."

Rivers' voice cut through the silent tension. He was completely unaware of the unspoken plans that were being made right in front of him, and he still believed that he was the one in control. He thought Tony was too far gone to do anything but stand there and die. He had no idea.

Tony closed his eyes and mentally prepared himself for what was coming.

"I've got your golden boy, Gibbs." He shook Tony by his hair and dug the knife in deeper. Tony moaned in response, but he told himself that it was only because that was what Rivers expected him to do. "I'm going to slice his throat to the spine while you watch."

He could feel blood running down the side of his neck, and he knew that what he was about to do was going to make it worse, but he had no other options. He had no other choice. Only one person was leaving that basement in a body bag.

And it wasn't going to be him.

"Bruce." He wished his voice were stronger, louder, less broken. But it was all he had left. And it was enough. "Don't say I didn't … warn you."

"Warn me about what, DiNozzo?" The words were laced with loathing and condescension.

"That payback … was a bad … idea."

"Yeah? Look around you, DiNozzo. They can't help you. If they shoot me, they kill you. If they don't shoot me, I kill you. So who's gonna win?"

Tony took one last breath, closed his eyes, and clenched his teeth.

"Me."

It all happened at the same time, the same second, the same heartbeat, the same breath.

Tony dropped his head, bent his knees, and threw all of his weight onto his wrists.

The extension cord jerked his shoulders up.

Then it gave way, and Tony's arms came down.

He screamed as he fell to his knees.

A gunshot rang out.

The window shattered.

The bullet sailed over Tony's head.

Bruce Rivers was dead before his body hit the floor.

Gibbs was on his knees at Tony's side almost as quickly.

Tony's head was hanging down, and his breathing was rapid and loud. He was wobbling badly, and Gibbs was amazed that he was still upright. He put one hand on Tony's right shoulder and the other under Tony's chin. He tipped his head up.

"You're … bleeding …" Tony's eyes were open, but they didn't look like they'd be staying that way very long.

Gibbs snorted, half in amusement, half in disbelief. "So are you."

Tony licked his lips. "I … win?"

"Yeah, Tony. You did."

"Good." 

Ziva was running down the stairs toward them, Fornell was moving to check on Rivers, and Tim's running footsteps echoed through the floorboards above them. 

"Great shot … McGibbs …"

Tony smiled, and then his eyes rolled back into his head.

Gibbs was strong enough to catch him again.


	17. Chapter 17

* * *

"Ziva!"

He didn't need to call for her, because she was already there. She took off her jacket and spread it out, then she straightened Tony's legs as Gibbs slowly lowered him to the floor. 

"McGee! Call … !"

"Already did, Boss." Tim's feet beat a rapid rhythm as he ran down the stairs. "They're four minutes out."

"Fornell!"

Tobias stood from where he'd been kneeling next to Rivers' body. "He's dead," he said. He nudged the knife away with his foot even as he holstered his weapon. "We're clear."

_'It's over.'_

Gibbs allowed himself just one second to be grateful for that fact, and then he snapped into action. Tony had made it that far on his own, but he'd need their help to make it the rest of the way. He looked up at Tim, at the handful of towels he'd grabbed from the kitchen on his way down, and he nodded in approval and appreciation. 

"Ziva, neck wound." It didn't look deep, but it was long, and it was bleeding heavily. "Don't touch his shoulder."

Ziva took a towel from Tim without a word. 

"McGee, knife." Tim handed his knife over silently. "Chest and side." Gibbs shifted to his right, and Tim knelt down in the spot he'd just vacated. 

The towels that Tim pressed against the two wounds started showing red almost instantly. The towel Ziva held against his neck had done the same. With those wounds being cared for, Gibbs could turn his attention to Tony's wrists and the electrical cord that still bound them. 

Tony's sudden drop had saved his life, without a doubt, but it had come with a price. The small cut that Rivers started on his neck had gotten bigger as the knife dragged across it, and it went from under his ear to his jaw. His already damaged shoulder was grotesquely swollen, misshapen and bruised, and there was something jutting out under the skin on the top of it. And the cord had been pulled so tight against the outsides of his raw and bloody wrists that it was almost buried in them. 

Gibbs shook his head silently as he opened the knife.

"Are you sure you want to do that?" Fornell had left his position next to Rivers' body and was knelt down on Tony's other side. "Those are in there deep."

"And they'll stay there." There was heat and anger in his voice. Did Fornell really think he was that stupid? "But I'm not leaving him tied up." He glanced up at Fornell quickly. "Wrap a towel around that arm, and don't let it move."

Gibbs sliced through the cord carefully, closed the knife and set it aside. Then he grabbed a towel of his own, lifted Tony's right arm, and applied pressure to the cut on the inside of his forearm. 

"Tony?" McGee leaned down, and then glanced up at Gibbs. "Boss?"

Gibbs turned his head in time to see Tony's eyes flutter open. At least, his left eye opened. His right eye was too swollen to open more than a sliver. He looked at each of them in turn – first McGee, then Ziva, then Fornell, and finally Gibbs. 

"You stay awake, DiNozzo. You hear me?"

Tony blinked slowly in understanding. He kept his one good eye on Gibbs, and Gibbs looked right back at him.

"That's it. Eyes on me. Stay with me."

Tony tried to follow the order, but it was obvious that he was having a hard time with it. His blinks were becoming slower and closer together, but he was fighting. 

"Paramedics are on the way. Hang in there."

Tony shifted position slightly, so little movement that it was barely noticeable. Then a shudder ran through his entire body, he squeezed his eyes shut, and his head reared back against the floor.

Ziva moved her left hand to the side of his face. "Open your eyes, Tony."

His eyes shot open as far as they could, but it wasn't in response to Ziva's request. He opened his mouth as if he were about to scream, but no sound passed his lips. Then his eyes fell closed again, and his head fell to the side. Blood started to run from his nose and down the side of his face.

"Tony!" 

"Damn it, DiNozzo!" Gibbs jammed his right thumb into Tony's sternum as hard as he could. 

"Wake up, Tony," Tim muttered beside him. "Wake up."

"Open your eyes, DiNozzo! Now!"

"Hello!" An authoritative voice called from upstairs. "Paramedics!" Three heads turned toward it and yelled out in unison.

"Down here!"

Gibbs didn't move. 

He kept his eyes locked on Tony's face, watching for some sign of waking, but he didn't see one. He heard the paramedics charging down the stairs with their gurney, and Fornell stood up.

"He's dead."

_'He's not dead!'_

"We'll have an ME take care of that. You were called for him."

Tim and Ziva both stood up and moved aside. But Gibbs didn't.

"Sir? Sir, we need you to move."

He still didn't.

"Boss."

"Gibbs."

He ignored them both, until they wrapped their hands around his arms and pulled him away. He didn't fight them, but he didn't help them, either. They got him to his feet, and the three of them stood, together, watching as the paramedics quickly and efficiently dressed Tony's wounds and moved him to the gurney. 

"Is anyone else injured?" One of the paramedics looked around the room quickly, but he stopped when his eyes fell on Gibbs. "Sir? Are you all right?"

"What?" He shook his head in frustration. "I'm fine. Take care of him."

Then Tim was there, taking charge again. "Boss, you're bleeding pretty badly. You've got two black eyes, your nose is probably broken, your arm and hands are cut … you should go. Go with them."

"I don't need …"

Tim lowered his voice. "Go with him."

Something about Tim's tone snapped Gibbs back to reality. He'd been starting to go off-kilter again, and there was no reason for it. There was no crime scene to destroy. There was no evidence to collect. There was no attempted murderer in the wind. Santori was dead, Duncan was dead, Rivers was dead, and Tony was still alive. 

_'It's over.'_

He nodded at Tim, then at Ziva, and they let go of his arms. He followed the paramedics up the stairs. 

"We will be right behind you, Gibbs," Ziva said. 

The gurney reached the landing, and the paramedics disappeared around the corner with Tony. Gibbs stopped there and turned back to look out over his basement one last time. He glanced around, making eye contact with both Tim and Ziva before his gaze turned to Bruce Rivers' body and the perfectly round hole between his eyes. 

His eyes narrowed, and his jaw hardened.

"There's a dead security guard around here somewhere, too, Tobias. Find him. And get them both the hell out of my house."

* * *

Tony didn't wake up in the ambulance.

The paramedic in the back checked his blood pressure, listened to his lungs, checked his oxygen levels and started an IV, but he didn't move. The sirens wailed, the horn honked, and the paramedic shouted back and forth with the driver, but his eyes never fluttered. The tires screeched when they entered the ambulance bay, the gurney rocked when they pulled him out, and chaos erupted when they burst through the doors, but he didn't even twitch.

Gibbs stayed at Tony's side as they made their way down the hall. He was holding a large piece of gauze tightly against his upper arm, clearly indicating that he was injured, too, but no one seemed to notice. No one told him to stay in the waiting room; no one told him to get out of the way. In fact, everyone seemed to be ignoring him, which wouldn't have bothered him if not for one small thing.

"Doc Marquardt," he said. "Someone needs to call her."

No one answered him.

They ran into the exam room, and Tony was quickly transferred from the gurney to the bed. The nurses began moving around, hanging IVs and hooking up wires and flipping switches. He recognized one of them, and he put his hand on her arm as she rushed by.

"Juanita!" She stopped and looked at him, blinking in surprise. She must not have realized who was lying on the bed in front of her. "Where's the doc? She said to …"

"She's upstairs, Agent Gibbs. I'm sure she'll be here if she can."

"Has anyone called …?"

"Excuse me."

"But she needs to …" He stumbled back as Juanita pushed her way past him. Another nurse darted behind him, and she almost knocked him off his feet.

He turned his head from side to side, eyes sweeping the room quickly as the swarm of medical personnel buzzed around. He wasn't happy with how many people stood between him and the bed. He was frustrated with the fact that he couldn't move any closer for fear of being thrown out. He was not impressed by the detached, emotionless way they looked at and talked about Tony. 

But what bothered him the most was that with the exception of one nurse who was probably just picking up an extra shift, no one in that room knew what they were dealing with. None of them knew what Tony had been through in the past two days, and none of them knew about the complications he'd already dealt with. They didn't know about his lungs; they didn't know about his heart; they didn't know about his muscle spasms or his shoulder or his oxygen levels or his blood volume. That was unacceptable. There was too big a risk that someone might do something wrong. 

Since no one seemed inclined to listen to him when he talked, he drew a deep breath and did the same thing he'd done the day before. 

"Doc!"

"Don't shout in my ER, Agent Gibbs." He spun toward the sound of her voice, letting out a relieved sigh when he saw her wading through the tide of nurses. "It disturbs the other patients."

He stepped toward her, but she held up her hand and stopped him. She looked him up and down, just once, and it was obvious she didn't like what she saw. She pointed one finger at him and then at the empty curtain area a few feet away.

"Go."

He opened his mouth to protest, but she'd already figured out what he was going to say.

"No arguing." She moved closer to Tony, picking his chart up and flipping through it as she walked. "You're bleeding all over the place, and you look like a raccoon. Get over there and let Tamera clean you up."

One of the nurses moved toward the empty bed. He followed her, though he kept looking back over his shoulder. When she reached for the top of the curtains to pull them closed, he hesitated, and Dr. Marquardt looked up from Tony's chart.

"Tamera," she said. "Leave it open."

Gibbs gave her a look of gratitude and sat down on the edge of the bed. 

"My name's Tamera. I'll be your nurse."

He nodded without looking at her. He already knew her name, and he already knew she was a nurse. He had more important things to worry about than whatever pleasantries she wanted to give him. She moved a blood pressure monitor closer to him, pushed his sleeve up, and wrapped the cuff around his left arm.

"He's a friend of yours?" she asked. When he didn't answer, she tried again. "Your son?" The silence that followed was broken only by the beep of the monitor, indicating that it was finished. He didn't even look to see what it was. It was either too low, too high or perfectly normally, and he didn't really care which. "Well, he's in good hands. Dr. Marquardt is one of the best trauma surgeons we have on staff."

After a few more attempts at small talk, none of which he returned, Tamera gave up and cleaned his cuts in silence. 

"Start with one unit of O-neg. Type and crossmatch for two more. It's going to be A-positive, but check it anyway." Dr. Marquardt had put a gown on over her clothes at some point, and she snapped a pair of blue gloves on. "Is his spine clear? Good. Roll him and let me see his back. Keep that arm immobilized." 

As soon as she saw what had been done between his shoulder blades, she turned and looked Gibbs straight in the eye. He saw no condemnation or blame there, only concern. "Page plastics." She gave Gibbs one of her tired smiles, and then she turned back to take a closer look at the damage "I'm going to want Dr. Marshall's help with this." 

She motioned with her hand for the nurses to put Tony back on the bed, and they did so. "Let's look at that eye." She stepped up to the head of Tony's bed, put one hand on either side of his face, and leaned down. "Call radiology. I need a CT scan of his head and face and an x-ray of this shoulder." She stepped around to Tony's left side.

"Sterile saline for these wrists. A lot of it." She looked down at his chest and side, then his neck, then the insides of both arms. "I'll need 5-0 silk and a 3/8 needle." She put one hand on the top of his shoulder and wrapped the other around his wrist, just above where the cord was still embedded. Very carefully, very slowly, she moved his arm up and away from his side.

Tony screamed in pain.

Gibbs jumped to his feet.

"Whoa!" Dr. Marquardt moved her hands from Tony's arm to the sides of his face. "Okay, okay. Tony. Tony!" She glanced up and saw Gibbs starting to move toward them, and she held up her hand. "You, stay!" Then she turned all of her attention back to her patient. "Tony. Look at me." 

Tony had stopped screaming, but he was breathing so heavily that Gibbs could see his chest heaving from fifteen feet away. 

"Hey, look at me, Tony."

Gibbs couldn't see his face, but Tony must have done what she asked, because she smiled down at him. 

"Hey there. That hurts, huh?"

Tony's head moved slightly, obviously an affirmative. 

"So, if I ask you to rate that shoulder on a scale of …?"

"Twenty." Cracked, raspy, and breathy … but awake, lucid, and honest.

It was the best sound Gibbs had heard all day.

She looked up at Juanita across the bed and nodded. "Fourteen of morphine, IV." She looked back down at Tony and leaned closer to him. "What was that, Tony?"

He hadn't heard Tony's questions, and he couldn't hear his answer. He wanted to move closer. But there was a doctor standing next to him with a needle in his hand, getting ready to sew his arm closed, and Tamera didn't look happy that he'd stood up in the first place, so he sat back down.

"Where's Agent Gibbs? He's fine, Tony." A few seconds passed. "No, he's fine. He's hurt, but he's fine. I promise." She turned and pointed in his direction, and a few seconds later, Tony turned his head. His one open eye followed her finger, and when he saw Gibbs, the tense, fearful expression on his face relaxed into one of relief. "See? He's right there."

Gibbs tipped his head once in acknowledgment. 

_'You made it.'_

Tony nodded slowly in response. 

_'We won.'_

"How about we get you fixed up, Tony? You'll be good as new in no time." 

_'You won.'_

* * *

He wasn't supposed to leave the ER. He wasn't supposed to leave the exam room. He wasn't supposed to get out of bed at all.

But he had questions, and she had answers, and he was going to find her.

He finally tracked her down outside. She saw him coming, and she smiled at him as he approached. Then she looked down at the cigarette in her hand guiltily. 

"I know these things are going to kill me," she said. "I keep trying to quit, but every time I think I'm going to make it, days like this happen, and I'm right back out here again." He kept walking without a word, and she took a long drag before she spoke again. "What can I do for you, Agent Gibbs?"

"They moved Tony out of the ER."

She nodded slowly. "That's because he's been admitted. I'll take you up to see him as soon as he's settled."

"Doc …"

"How are you, Agent Gibbs?" 

He was surprised by the question. He'd thought that Dr. Marquardt, of all people, would understand that he wasn't there to talk about himself.

"I'm fine."

She laughed lightly and took another drag from her cigarette. "You have a broken nose, twelve stitches in the back of each hand, twenty-five in your arm, and a Grade Three concussion." She shook her head. "You have a strange definition of 'fine'. I think I know where Tony gets his from." She sighed. "But I guess your doctor agrees, because he wants to release you."

"Good."

"I went out to talk to your team for a few minutes. I understand from Agent McGee that the threat to Tony has been …"

"Neutralized," he interrupted. 

"I think he said resolved, but I get the idea, either way." She took one last drag from her cigarette, and then she smashed it in the ashtray. "I noticed that Agent Rivers isn't out in the waiting room with everyone else. Is there a reason for that?"

"Yes."

She froze, and her eyes widened in surprise and understanding. "Wow. So, he's been … arrested?"

Gibbs shook his head slowly. 

"Damn." She pushed her hair out of her eyes and turned toward him. "Okay. That's going to … damn." She took a deep breath and shook her head. "But I don't think you're out here to tell me about Agent Rivers."

"No."

She smiled softly, sighed, and straightened her shoulders. "Fair enough. First things first – Tony is going to be fine."

"Going to be." Gibbs didn't like the way that sounded at all.

Dr. Marquardt nodded. "Well, it's going to take some time. I'm not going to lie; he's pretty banged up right now. But he's in much, much better shape than he was when he got here Monday night."

Gibbs stood and listened attentively as she gave him another rundown of Tony's injuries. 

Though the wounds he had were deeper than the first time, there weren't as many, and he hadn't bled as long. The cut on his throat had missed the artery by half-an-inch. His arms, chest, and side were clean and uncomplicated. A plastic surgeon had put the stitches in his back, and even with the jagged edges Rivers had left behind when he cut them back open, he probably wouldn't have much of a scar. He'd been given two units of blood so far, and he was going to get one more. If not for his blood volume being so low to begin with, he wouldn't have needed that much. His blood pressure was a little low, but she wasn't concerned. His oxygen levels were fine. They were monitoring his heart, but Dr. Marquardt didn't expect any problems. 

He had a blowout fracture of the orbital floor of his right eye. That was why it was swollen shut, and that was why his nose had been bleeding. The blood pooling in his sinuses and running down his throat had made Tony's breaths rattle and his coughs sound wet. His eyeball was going to turn red, and his vision might be blurry until that cleared up, but he didn't need surgery. Gibbs' insistence that he keep breathing, no matter how much it hurt, had worked. His lungs were fine.

His wrists had been cleaned, sutured and bandaged. There didn't appear to be any nerve damage in his hands. He'd bruised both of his knees, but he hadn't done any significant or lasting damage to them. His concussion had been aggravated, but not badly. His intercranial pressure was fine. He'd never lost consciousness because of a head injury.

"His shoulder," Gibbs said.

"Yes," she said with a nod. "His shoulder. It is by far my biggest concern right now."

His shoulder hadn't been healed from the original dislocation yet. Rivers had knocked him down the stairs, and he'd landed on it. Tony told Dr. Marquardt that was the only time he'd lost consciousness. He had several torn ligaments, and the bump on the top, though it might shrink in size, was going to be permanent. He'd dislocated it again, and all indications were that he'd done it himself when the cords yanked his shoulders up as he dropped to the floor. It was going to heal, though it would take time. He was going to be in the immobilizer for at least three weeks, and a sling for several weeks after that. He would regain full mobility in his arm. He didn't need surgery.

Gibbs let all of the information sink in and process before he spoke again. 

"He lied to you."

Dr. Marquardt's eyes widened in surprise. "About what?"

"That wasn't the only time he lost consciousness. He passed out right after he hit his knees. He woke up for a minute or two, but he passed out again. He was out cold when they brought him in. Remember? He didn't wake up until you moved his arm."

She smiled, and then she laughed. He stiffened and raised his shoulders in anger.

"Oh, Agent Gibbs." She stopped laughing, but she was still smiling when she spoke again. "Have you ever dislocated a separated shoulder?"

He shook his head. "No."

"Neither have I, but I can still tell you, it hurts like hell. The first time he passed out was probably a combination of exhaustion and his mind catching on to the fact that his shoulder had just been pulled back out. And I'm guessing that when he passed out that second time, he'd done something stupid. Like, say, move?"

Gibbs thought back over that moment. Tony had been looking at him, and he'd moved – not much, so little that Gibbs wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't been watching him so closely. Then he'd shuddered, thrown his head back, and passed out. 

"Yeah," he said. "He did."

"He passed out from the pain. He stayed that way because his mind obviously didn't want to wake up and deal with it. Honestly, Agent Gibbs, with all the movement involved in getting him in and out of the ambulance, and then getting him into a bed, it was probably for the best that he was out cold for it."

She had a point there. 

Gibbs took a few seconds to finish digesting everything he'd just been told. Despite everything he'd been through, despite everything Bruce Rivers had done to him, Tony was alive. And he was going to be just fine.

_'Rot in Hell, you stupid bastard.'_

Gibbs smiled.

"I've already spoken to the director of the medical floor Tony's been moved to. In light of the fact that his life is in no danger medically, Agents McGee and Fornell both assure us that there is no investigation to preserve, and the threat to his safety has been …" She paused as she tried to think of the right word. "Neutralized … I'm afraid that she sees no reason to waive the visiting rules. No one is going to be allowed to stay with him outside of visiting hours."

The smile faded from his face, and he sighed. He really should have expected that.

"Also, we're pretty full at the moment, and all of our private rooms are already taken. He's going to have a roommate this time."

"I want to see him," Gibbs said. "As soon as I'm released, I'm going to …"

"Oh, you're not being released, Agent Gibbs."

"What?" He tilted his head in confusion. "I thought you said …"

"I said that your current doctor wants to release you. But I forgot to mention that your care has been taken over by another doctor. A real hardass. One who insists on a mandatory admittance for 24 hour observation after all head injuries above a Grade II."

"No. That's not …"

"Of course, since the private rooms are full, you'll have a roommate, too."

She was smiling. It wasn't a tired smile, or a worried smile, or a fake smile. It was a real, true smile.

It took him longer than it should have to figure out why. And when he did, he laughed. 

"I'm rubbing off on you, Doc," he said. "Breaking the rules?"

She shook her head. "Bending them. Because it's in my patient's best interest." She took one step toward him. "Both of my patients' best interests."

A comfortable silence settled around them, and for the first time in forty-eight hours, Gibbs allowed himself to relax.

"Let's get you back to the ER before they send security out looking for you," Dr. Marquardt finally said. "I'll bring your team in so you can give them the good news, and I'll get your admission papers drawn up. Tony's asleep – not sedated, just sleeping – and I think it would be good if you're in the room and settled as quickly as possible. I think you should be the first person he sees when he wakes up. That'll go further toward convincing him that he's going to be all right than anything I could ever say."

She turned to walk back into the hospital, but Gibbs' hand on her arm stopped her.

"Thank you, Doc." The words seemed insignificant, weak, and they didn't even come close to expressing what he was feeling. He hoped that the rest of the meaning was showing in his eyes and on his face, because he didn't know how else to express it. "For everything."

Another smile, one that told him his meaning was clear.

"You're welcome. Just do me a favor?"

"Sure," he said. "Anything."

"Don't ever bring him back to me like this again."

He nodded slowly. "I'll do my best."

She put her hand on top of his. "Of that, Agent Gibbs," she said, "I have never had any doubt."


	18. Chapter 18

* * *

"I look like a freak."

Ziva sat down on the end of his bed and looked at him through the open bathroom door.

"Do not feel bad, Tony. You are a freak." She smiled. "Besides, what is it you say? Hens dig scars?"

"Chicks," he said. "Chicks dig scars."

She tilted her head in confusion. "I thought chicks were baby chickens."

"They are."

"Then you call women babies? Would you not prefer a hen?"

"No, I'm not calling women … Oh, never mind." He leaned forward so he could see himself more clearly in the mirror above the sink. His vision wasn't as bad as he'd thought it would be, but it was still blurry at a distance "Anyway, scars, yes. But bruises that cover half your face and a solid red eyeball? Not so much."

"It is not that bad, Tony."

He turned toward her in disbelief. "Have you seen me lately?"

"Yes," she said. "And at the moment, I am just happy that you are here to be seen." She pushed herself up from the bed and walked toward him.

He smiled softly. "Okay, yeah. There's that."

"It looks much better than it did thirty-six hours ago. At least you can open your eye now." She reached up and gently brushed his hair away from his forehead. "You are healing, Tony. It will not be red forever. You look fine to me."

They stood in silence for a few moments, until he finally worked up the courage to say what he'd been wanting to say to her for more than a week.

"Don't go," he said. "Don't go back."

She sighed. "I must. My father is …"

"Not the reason you're going to Tel Aviv." She froze so completely that she didn't even breathe, and for the first time since he'd found the picture on her desk, he knew with certainty that he was right. "Who is he?"

"Who is who?" She smiled again, but it didn't reach her eyes. "I have told you that there is no one …"

"I'm done with people lying and hiding things to protect me, Ziva. I thought I made that clear the other day. I thought you understood." 

She nodded slowly. "I do."

"Then tell me who he is."

"He …" She trailed off, as though she was searching for the right words to use. "He is no one that you need to be concerned about." She smiled again and touched his arm lightly. "But your concern is noted. It is misplaced and unnecessary, but very … sweet."

He wrapped his hand around hers and squeezed it. "Just promise me you'll be careful."

She lifted her head and looked at him. "I am always careful."

The door to the room burst open. Ziva dropped Tony's hand and stepped away from him, and he turned back to the mirror.

"I can't believe I left this in the car."

Tim tossed the duffel bag down on the bed. He picked up on the mild tension in the room, and he looked back and forth between Tony and Ziva. He narrowed his eyes in mild suspicion. 

"Am I interrupting something?"

"Nope," Tony said easily.

"Tony is simply admiring himself in the mirror, McGee. I would think you would be used to that by now."

Tony walked out of the bathroom and crossed to the bed. He noticed the way Tim and Ziva both watched him as he walked, and he was very aware of the fact that they were staring at the stitches on his back, across his chest, and down his side as he moved. They were counting the bruises, checking for any signs of a limp, and making sure that the straps on his immobilizer stayed tight. 

He made a mental note to work with them on developing their subtlety, and he forced himself to ignore the way he felt under their scrutiny. He really did look like some kind of freak, and if he was going to go out in public – which he was – he was going to have to get used to people staring at him.

"There better not be jeans in this bag, McGee." 

Tim looked down at the floor in embarrassment. "I am so sorry about that," he said. "I didn't even think about …"

"Yeah, I noticed that." Tony dug through the bag one-handed until he found what he was looking for, and he pulled the gray sweatpants out with a small cry of victory. "Yes! Good boy, McGee. You're forgiven."

Ziva looked down at her watch. "Oh, I must go now." She walked over to Tony and kissed him lightly on the cheek. "Feel better, Tony." Then she walked over to Tim and gave him a hug. "I will be back on Wednesday."

"I thought you were coming back Monday."

"I was," she said. Then she turned toward Tony with a grin on her face. "But then my vacation was so rudely interrupted, and the director …"

"Rudely?" Tony didn't even have to fake the insulted tone of voice. "I'm sorry that I so rudely intruded on your holiday in Israel, Officer David. The next time someone decides to kill me, I'll make sure that they pick a more convenient time for you." He didn't mean the words to sound as angry as they did, but he couldn't seem to stop them. "You do know that I almost died, right?"

The smile fell from Ziva's lips. "Yes, Tony," she said softly. "I do."

He knew that she'd only been teasing him, and he'd started out teasing her back. He didn't know when, exactly, he'd lost control of the filter between his brain and his mouth, and he didn't know when he'd gone from playing along to lashing out, but it was obvious that he'd done both.

Ziva stared out the window, and Tony stared at the wall. Tim turned his head back and forth between them.

Tony swallowed loudly. "Um, that … that came out wrong." 

"It's the pain meds. Right, Tony?" It was Tim, once again offering him the out that he couldn't find for himself. "You know how he gets on those, Ziva. He doesn't even know what he's saying half the time."

Ziva blinked and forced a smile back onto her face. "How is that different from any other day?"

"Hey!" That time, the indignation was fake. "There's a difference between not knowing what I'm talking about and not knowing what I'm saying."

"Really?" Tim asked. "And what would that be?"

"I don't know right now," Tony said lightly. "Ask me again when I'm not coming down off morphine. I'm sure I'll know then."

"You mean you will make something up." Ziva's smile was real again, and the atmosphere in the room had grown noticeably warmer.

"Probably," he admitted. "But it'll sound good."

It was Tim's turn to look at his watch. "You'd really better go, Ziva. You don't want to miss your flight."

"Yes, you are right, McGee." She smiled at them both one last time as she walked to the door. "Stay out of trouble while I am gone."

"You, too," Tony said. 

She pulled the door open and walked out. 

Tim and Tony stood, motionless and silent, watching as the door pulled itself shut behind her. 

"You haven't had any morphine since last night," Tim finally said. 

"I know."

"It wore off a long time ago."

Tony nodded. "I know that, too."

Tim shook his head and sighed. "So, are we back to that whole staring-at-the-spot-she-used-to-be-until-she-comes-back thing?"

Tony shook his head. "No," he said as he turned away. "No, we're not."

"Good." Tim walked over to the bed and sat down next to the bag as Tony dug through it again. "Because we have more important things to worry about right now."

"Like what?"

"Like how to keep Gibbs from killing us for what we're about to do."

Tony smiled. "Hey, I almost died this week, remember? I'm safe for at least three days."

"Oh, yeah, that's great for you. What about me?"

"Well, that depends." He pulled out a shirt and headed for the bathroom to get dressed. "How fast can you run?"

* * *

They'd made two stops on their way to the house, and they had taken so much out of Tony that he almost called the whole thing off. He was grateful that Tim was driving, because it meant that he could lay his head back and close his eyes for a while. He was just about to doze off when Tim started talking.

"You know … IA is all over the Rivers thing," he said. He sounded reluctant to start the conversation, maybe because he was worried about how Tony would take it, but it was obvious that there was something he needed to get off his chest. 

Tony didn't move or open his eyes. "Why do they care?"

"Well, an agent involved shooting, and the person who died was an agent, too."

"Bruce Rivers was no agent," Tony returned hotly. "The person who almost died is an agent. The person who did the shooting is an agent. The person who died wasn't."

"I know," Tim said. "But they're still looking at it that way."

"Well, IA is stupid." They pulled up to a stop light. Tony opened one eye and looked at Tim through it. "Do you think it was a clean kill, McGee?"

"Yeah." Tim nodded his head. "I do."

"Then what's the problem?"

The light turned green and the car started forward again. "I've never …" Tim took a deep breath and tightened his hands on the steering wheel. "Have you ever killed someone you … someone you knew?"

Tony finally understood what Tim was so upset about. It was a feeling he knew, and, unfortunately, one he knew well. "Yeah," he said. He closed his eye again and settled back against the seat. "I have."

"And?"

"And … it sucks. But sometimes, it has to be done."

Tim nodded slowly. "It's just … I don't know. Harder than it should be to deal with? A week ago, we were working with the guy. Talking to him, standing next to him, teasing him. And then the whole time you were in the hospital, he was there, and we thought we were working with him again, and now … now he's dead. And I killed him, Tony. I did that." 

Tony turned slightly in his seat and opened his eyes. "Look, McGee. He was going to kill me. We know that. He damn near did Monday night. And he had it in for Gibbs, too, and maybe you and Ziva and Fornell. He'd already killed Santori and Duncan. There's no way of knowing who else he'd have killed if he got the chance. And maybe I'm biased, but I'm glad you stopped him. I'm happy you blew the son of a bitch's brains out."

"So am I," Tim said softly.

"I owe you my life, Tim. You saved my life. That's what you did."

Tim didn't speak. 

"The only question that really matters is this. In the same situation, knowing what you know now, this guy's going to kill me and you're the only one who can stop him, do you take the shot again?"

"Yes." The answer was given with no hesitation.

Tony smiled broadly. "Then you did the right thing." He reached across himself and punched Tim lightly on the shoulder. "Thank you, by the way. For saving me. You're my McHero."

Tim laughed. "You'd have done the same for me." 

"Of course I would." Tony leaned back against the seat and closed his eyes again. A few seconds of comfortable silence passed between them. 

"So. You do know that Gibbs is going to kill us, right?"

Tony smiled. "Nah."

"You left the hospital early, without him, knowing that he was coming to get you. And now we're going to the one place he told you not to go without him."

"Yep."

"He's going to kill us."

"We're good, McGee. Trust me. He's not going to kill us."

* * *

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't shoot you both right now."

Tim and Tony froze in place, then slowly turned toward the voice in unison. After a few seconds of guilty silence, Tony smiled and relaxed his shoulders.

"Hey, Boss!" he said cheerfully. "What are you doing here?"

Gibbs narrowed his eyes and glared down at them. "It's my house. The question is – what the hell are you doing here?"

Tim and Tony looked at each other. Tony shrugged his one good shoulder, and Tim held up the piece of drywall he'd just pulled down.

"Fixing your ceiling," Tony said. "Like I said I would."

Gibbs relaxed his face a bit, but he didn't smile. "You can't hang drywall with two good arms, DiNozzo. How the hell are you going to do it with one?"

Tony jerked his thumb in Tim's direction. "That's why McHandyman's here."

Gibbs turned from Tony to Tim. "You know how to hang drywall, McGee?"

Tim shook his head nervously. "No, Boss."

"Look!" Tony's voice was bright, excited, and happy. He walked over to the white bags laying on the workbench and started pulling things out of them. "We asked the guys at the hardware store what we needed. We got the drywall." He pointed at the 4x4 sheet Tim was standing next to. "And these screws …" He pulled out the box and held it up, then reached back into the bag. "And this mud stuff … Oh, and some shop lights! Because your old ones don't have cords anymore and …"

"DiNozzo!"

Tony stopped and dropped his head. Tim did the same.

Gibbs started down the stairs. "McGee," he said. "Vance wants to see you. Something about an IA investigation he's going to shut down."

Tim nodded his head silently. He glanced over at Tony, who didn't look up from the floor, and headed for the stairs. As he walked up them, Gibbs stuck his hand out and stopped him. Tim looked up.

"That's a good job, Tim." They both glanced over at Tony again, and Gibbs put his hand on Tim's shoulder. "A damn good job."

Tim smiled. "Thanks, Boss." 

Gibbs moved his hand, and Tim jogged up the stairs. "See ya later, Tony!" he called out as he rounded the corner and disappeared into the kitchen.

Gibbs started down the stairs again, slowly.

"Did I not make myself clear, DiNozzo?" he asked. Tony didn't look up at him. "When I told you that I'd be back to pick you up from the hospital, did I do or say something to give you the impression that was optional?"

Tony shook his head.

"And when I told you that I didn't want you coming back here alone? Did that seem like a suggestion?"

"I wasn't alone," Tony muttered.

"That's not the point."

"Yes," Tony argued. "Yes, it is." He finally raised his head, and it was done in defiance. "I'm not a little kid, Gibbs. I don't need a bodyguard, and I don't need a babysitter. You can't tell me where I can and cannot go, or when I can and cannot go there."

Gibbs squared his shoulders and stopped a few feet from him. "When it involves my house, I damn well can."

Tony still held the tub of drywall mud in his hand, and he slammed it down on the workbench. "No," he insisted. "You can't." He motioned around the basement with his arm. "I've been here a hundred times by myself. It's never been a problem."

"That was before you almost died here." The conversation wasn't going the way he'd expected it to. He'd thought that he'd come in angry, and Tony would back down, but that hadn't happened. There were a lot of emotions flying around the basement, emotions that Gibbs had wanted to avoid, but once they'd started down that path, it was impossible to get it back on track. "Damn it, Tony. You almost died here."

"I know that!" Tony walked away from the workbench and toward the hole in the ceiling. He stopped right under the beam, in the exact same spot that Rivers had almost killed him before he'd died himself at the end of McGee's sniper rifle, and turned back toward Gibbs. "I was here! I know what happened. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry it happened here, Gibbs, and I wish I could change that. I wish it had happened somewhere else. Anywhere else."

Gibbs shook his head and stepped forward. "I don't," he said. "If it hadn't happened here, I wouldn't have …" He took a deep breath when he realized the truth of what he was saying. "If he hadn't brought you here, Tony, I wouldn't have found you."

Tony dropped his arm to his side and looked down at his feet again.

"If it hadn't happened here, I'd have lost you."

Tony licked his lips and took a deep breath. "Then why don't you want me here now?"

"It's not that I don't want you here," he insisted. "It's that I was worried that being here would upset you. That it would hurt you. That you'd be scared or nervous or …"

"He's dead, Gibbs," Tony interrupted. "He can't do any of that anymore."

"I know. But I just keep thinking about you in that hospital bed, trying to remember what happened, and …" He trailed off when he saw another bag sitting on the workbench. A brown paper bag, laying on its side, with tools in it. 

His tools.

Tony noticed what he was looking at, and he walked back over. "I, um … we … me and McGee, we … stopped by the Hoover building." He reached into the bag and pulled out the antique handsaw. 

Seeing that saw in Tony's hand almost stopped Gibbs' heart in his chest, and he swallowed hard. "Do you know … do you know what that …?"

"I know," Tony said, "That I gave this to you for a reason. And it wasn't so it could spend the next twenty-five years in a cardboard box in the FBI's basement." He smiled, almost shyly, and looked up at Gibbs out of the corner of his eye. "Whatever else was done with it, it doesn't matter. Just like what happened in this basement doesn't matter. Because it was never about the tools, or the basement, or you." Tony looked back down at the saw. "It was never about you, Boss."

Gibbs nodded silently. 

"I told you I'm not going to let him change anything about this place for me, and I meant it. But I really need to know that he didn't change it for you, either."

Gibbs nodded, hesitantly at first, but then stronger. "He didn't." For the first time since he'd found Tony hanging from his rafters, he felt the truth of his own convictions. "He failed at everything he tried to do," he said. "Every single damn thing."a

He took the saw from Tony's hand and looked down at it. The weight of it felt good, perfectly balanced, just as it always had. He liked it just as much as he had the first time Tony had given it to him. "Thank you."

Tony smiled.

Gibbs transferred the handle of the saw into his left hand, and he reached into the pocket of his coat with his right. "I've got something for you, too."

Tony turned toward him in surprise. "Really?"

Gibbs nodded. "You and McGee aren't the only ones who stopped by to see Fornell."

He pulled the keys out first, and Tony's eyes lit up when he saw them. Then he handed him his wallet, then his gun. And finally, he flipped open Tony's badge and handed it to him. As Tony ran his thumb lovingly around the edges of his shield, he was positively beaming.

"Feel good?" Gibbs asked.

Tony nodded. "It does. It feels like … like I've got my life back." He chuckled and shook his head slightly. "Ya know, it's weird. I've never had someone try to steal my life before. End it, yeah. I'm used to that. But steal it? Why the hell did he want it so bad?"

Gibbs put the saw down and leaned back against the workbench, at ease in his own sanctuary for the first time in five days. "You mean why was he so jealous of you?"

"Yeah."

"Why are most people jealous?" Gibbs asked. "You have everything he wanted. You are everything he wanted to be."

Tony's mounting confusion showed on his face. "But … why? I mean, how?" He sat down in the chair at the end of the bench. "He was right about me, you know. I am a screw up. And I don't understand why you put up with me most of the time, either."

Gibbs sighed and pushed himself away from the workbench. "No, he was wrong about you. He was right about me."

Tony looked up at him.

"If your situations were reversed, and Kale had knocked you out and used your gun to kill Azari, I wouldn't have let Vance fire you over it." 

Tony grinned. "You'd have had my six."

"Always," Gibbs said with a nod. "Fornell didn't do anything to save his job, and he knew that I'd have done anything in my power to save yours. But what Rivers didn't understand is that I didn't give that to you. I didn't just randomly decide to put my trust in you, or give my loyalty to you. You earned it." He put his hand on Tony's shoulder and looked down at him. "You deserve it, Tony. Every bit of it."

Tony looked up at him, the expression on his face somewhere between disbelief and awe. Then his grin turned mischievous. "Does that mean you like me, Boss? Really, really like me?"

"You'll do." Gibbs ruffled his hair fondly, then turned away. "Now, get up, DiNozzo. We've got a ceiling to hang."

Tony jumped to his feet, and Gibbs pretended not to notice that he wobbled a bit when he did it.

"On your six, Boss!"

_'Right where you belong.'_


End file.
